Two KU students recognized for research on terminally ill older adults

Photos of Nakashima and Bern-Klug receiving the fellowship are available via e-mail; contact kunews@ku.edu.

LAWRENCE -- Miko Nakashima thought it was virtually impossible that both she and her friend Mercedes Bern-Klug would be chosen for a competitive Hartford Doctoral Fellowship.

Fortunately, she was wrong.

Nakashima and Bern-Klug, both of whom are doctoral students in the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas, were selected as two of only seven finalists nationwide for the inaugural presentation of the Hartford Fellowship.

The fellowship, sponsored by the John A. Hartford Foundation in New York, provides $40,000 and numerous mentoring opportunities. It supports the research of promising graduate students in the field of geriatric social work.

Both students were recognized for their innovative research dealing with end-of-life issues among older adults.

Nakashima, a graduate student from Nagoya, Japan, used a naturalistic inquiry to focus on psychosocial and spiritual well-being among terminally ill older adults. She interviewed 15 such patients, ranging in age from 66 years to 103 years, along with their caregivers and family members, to determine why many of them continued to have a positive quality of life while dealing with a terminal illness.

"I wanted to define the success of their end of life by the presence of positive factors, such as hope and contentment," Nakashima said. "I found that their social and spiritual quality of life was often good even while their physical condition was deteriorating."

Bern-Klug, who also works on community education and research activities at the Landon Center on Aging in Kansas City, Kan., expanded on the data collected by Sarah Forbes, assistant professor in the School of Nursing at the KU Medical Center. Bern-Klug conducted research on the social role of 55 seriously ill nursing home residents in the Kansas City area, along with their family members and nursing home staff. She compared the perspectives of these groups during a six-month period.

"I wanted to find out the expectations for people with advanced chronic illness -- among themselves, the staff and their families -- and then look at ways of how we can smooth over those differences," Bern-Klug said.

The support the fellowship provides is especially important, Bern-Klug said, not only because the elderly population is growing rapidly but also because it is helping change the way professionals treat older adults.

"It's bigger than just Miko and me," Bern-Klug said. "All older people are not alike, and we need to be training professionals -- including social workers -- to work with them."

Rosemary Chapin, associate professor of social welfare at KU, director of the Office of Aging and Long Term Care in the School of Social Welfare, and adviser to both students, said the fact that they were chosen speaks highly of both their cutting-edge research and the social welfare program at KU.

"It was wonderful for the students in terms of helping them develop a network to get funding for their research and making connections with colleagues," Chapin said. "It's also very prestigious for the university, the social welfare program and the Office of Aging and Long Term Care."

Chapin said the KU students had an advantage because both had spent several years in the profession before enrolling in graduate school. Nakashima spent seven years in hospice care as a clinical social worker. Along with working at the Center on Aging, Bern-Klug already had published research on geriatric social welfare.

Both students, meanwhile, agreed that the social welfare program at KU encouraged them to fully develop their research.

"We were very happy that both of us got the fellowship because we knew it would be difficult," Nakashima said. "But our Ph.D. program at KU is a very good, rigorous program that is research-oriented, and the support of our peers and faculty was a major factor in helping us both get the fellowship."