Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Quiz Apr21

Our last quiz, before Tuesday's exam.

5- A Better Life

1. How many residents at Chase Memorial had some form of cognitive disability?

2. What did Thomas confuse with what, when first trying to address the "despair" he encountered at Chase?

3. What was attractive to Thomas about going home from Harvard for a family medicine residency?

4. What are the Three Plagues of nursing home existence?

5. What happened with drugs and deaths at Chase?

6. What was the most important finding of Thomas's experiment?

BONUS: What did Josiah Royce mean by "loyalty"?

BONUS: What's "the only way death is not meaningless"?

BONUS: What late legal philosopher said we need autonomy in the sense of being free to author our own lives?

BONUS: In Green Houses like the Florence Center, caregivers are more like ____ than _____.

DQ
1. If the ER is the opposite of a nursing home, which environment is more attractive to you? Or is neither? What can be done to improve either or both?

2. Besides adding children, animals and plants, what would you suggest doing to humanize and vitalize the climate in nursing homes?

3. Not many professionals in any field choose to live "completely off the grid" or manage a farm. Would the medical profession benefit from the presence of more self-reliant, "free spirit" types? Do these qualities evoke greater empathy or care? Or possibly less?

4. Do you agree that the best way to combat a stagnant culture is to subvert it, and blow it up with a Big Bang? 120

5. Should nursing staff be expected or required to clean up after dogs and cats etc.? Can "beautiful subversion" coexist with conventional notions of professionalism?

*6. Does it matter to you what happens to life on earth an hour after you die? Does it matter more to medical professionals in general?

7. Middle schoolers taking fitness classes together with nursing home residents, and working with dementia: good ideas? (132) And: "They still get to make poor choices for themselves if they choose." (135)

8. "Making lives meaningful in old age is new." (137) Is it? "There's no such thing as a tippy doctor." (138) Isn't there?
==
Michael Kinsley, Old Age: A Beginner's Guide -

The journalist Michael Kinsley was 43 when he learned he had Parkinson’s disease, and about 50 when he announced that fact to the world. Parkinson’s is a slow sickness. (“You still have to floss,” his neurologist told him.) Mr. Kinsley is now 65, with body more or less intact, and wits entirely so, if his superb new book is any indication.

“Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide” isn’t really about Parkinson’s. It’s about aging in general. More specifically, it’s about how the baby boomer generation, which is now rounding third base like a herd of buffalo and stampeding for home plate (which is a hole in the ground, as the novelist Jim Harrison liked to say), will choose to think and act in the face of it.

“Sometimes I feel like a scout from my generation, sent out to experience in my 50s what even the healthiest boomers are going to experience in their 60s, 70s or 80s,” Mr. Kinsley writes. “There are far worse medical conditions than Parkinson’s, and there are far worse cases of Parkinson’s than mine. But what I have, at the level I have it, is an interesting foretaste of our shared future.”

Mr. Kinsley put off telling people about his medical condition, partly out of denial. Also, he didn’t want to tap too early into the “vat of sympathy from friends and family.” He was concerned that he’d be written off professionally. He reports being offered the editorship of The New Yorker in 1998, five years after his diagnosis. The result, in terms of how others would view his condition, was dismaying.

“I told the owner, Si Newhouse, that I had Parkinson’s and invited him to change his mind, but he generously said it didn’t matter,” Mr. Kinsley writes. “A few hours later, though, he withdrew the offer with no explanation. I chose to believe him that the Parkinson’s didn’t matter. To withdraw the offer for that reason would be, among other things, probably illegal. But I also doubt that he would have made the offer in the first place if he’d known.”
==
TED Talks (@TEDTalks)
#TEDTalks offer new ways to think about death: t.ted.com/d2YW5a0

NYT Opinionator (@NYTOpinionator)
Balancing Faith and Science in the I.C.U. nyti.ms/1D0DxCS

Exercise-The Right Dose. Those who met the guidelines precisely, completing 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise, enjoyed greater longevity benefits and 31 percent less risk of dying during the 14-year period compared with those who never exercised.
The sweet spot for exercise benefits, however, came among those who tripled the recommended level of exercise, working out moderately, mostly by walking, for 450 minutes per week, or a little more than an hour per day. Those people were 39 percent less likely to die prematurely than people who never exercised... nyt
==
  1. Well: Treating Sleep Apnea May Ward Off Memory Decline
  2. Sex, Dementia and a Husband on Trial at Age 78
  3. The New Old Age: The Tangle of Coordinated Health Care
  4. Well: Young Women’s Hearts at Risk
  5. Well: Board Certification and Fees Anger Doctors
  6. Well: Christopher McDougall Wants You to Go Outside

*Scheffler's Afterlife-
I believe in life after death.
No, I don’t think that I will live on as a conscious being after my earthly demise. I’m firmly convinced that death marks the unqualified and irreversible end of our lives.
My belief in life after death is more mundane. What I believe is that other people will continue to live after I myself have died. You probably make the same assumption in your own case. Although we know that humanity won’t exist forever, most of us take it for granted that the human race will survive, at least for a while, after we ourselves are gone.
Because we take this belief for granted, we don’t think much about its significance. Yet I think that this belief plays an extremely important role in our lives, quietly but critically shaping our values, commitments and sense of what is worth doing. Astonishing though it may seem, there are ways in which the continuing existence of other people after our deaths — even that of complete strangers — matters more to us than does our own survival and that of our loved ones.
Consider a hypothetical scenario. Suppose you knew that although you yourself would live a long life and die peacefully in your sleep, the earth and all its inhabitants would be destroyed 30 days after your death in a collision with a giant asteroid. How would this knowledge affect you? (continues)

22 comments:

  1. Quiz question: According to AG, what experiment has failed? pp. 128

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. “It’s been an experiment in social engineering, putting our fates in the hands of people valued more for their technical prowess than for their understanding of human needs.”

      Delete
  2. DQ: AG states that “all we ask is to be allowed to remain the writers of our own story” (pp.140) How does this statement apply to you? Have you encountered any “unimaginable difficulties”?

    ReplyDelete
  3. In this article, political journalist and commentator, Michael Kinsley shares his story on living life with Parkinson’s.

    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/28/have-you-lost-your-mind

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here is a link to guidelines of federal nursing home regulations. What's important to note is the introduction to the guidelines.
    http://www.nursinghomealert.com/federal-nursing-home-regulations-and-state-laws

    ReplyDelete
  5. Based on the regulations from the link do you think places like Chase memorial and Sanborn Place meet or exceed the requirements for being considered nursing homes?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Middle schoolers taking fitness classes together with nursing home residents, and working with dementia: good ideas? (132)

    I feel like this would be a perfect way to get these two generations to interact. It is seen less and less that 3rd generation lives with the 1st, and this would give a chance for wisdom to reach the younger ones. It also would give more motivation to the residents just as the nursing home in our reading did.

    ReplyDelete
  7. http://petsfortheelderly.org/research.html

    Here's a lot of cool information about the benefits of pets for the elderly.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Quiz Question:

    Where was the first Green House built?

    P.s. In the town I was born in!

    (pp.142)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. the town of Chelsea at the Leonard Florence Center for Living

      Delete
  9. Here is a video talking about the Green House centers built to provide the elderly with a better alternative to nursing homes.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4Ap1ByNgKE

    ReplyDelete
  10. Discussion: 2. Besides adding children, animals and plants, what would you suggest doing to humanize and vitalize the climate in nursing homes?

    I think the major obstacle that needs to be overcome in nursing homes is the fact that people treat it like the place to die. It should be a place to live. It should be like home rather than a place to live until you die. Caring for the elders as people with years to live and like a family friends would change the air completely. I've been to many nursing homes and no matter what animate objects you add it has to be the attitude ad quality of care that changes.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Here is a link of a comparison of different countries care for the elderly:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/03/these-are-the-best-and-worst-countries-to-be-elderly/

    ReplyDelete
  12. DQ:
    What have been your experiences and views towards care for the elderly? What should change, and what should stay the same?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Besides adding children, animals and plants, what would you suggest doing to humanize and vitalize the climate in nursing homes?

    Besides the already mentioned things that can be done to more humanize the environment of a nursing home, I would say that if the people who live there are not constantly reminded of their disability/inability to perform a sudden task or even prohibited from utilizing simple, every-day equipment then maybe they can shift their focus to enjoying the more "sunshiny" aspects of life in their remaining years. In other words, it goes back to this idea of enabling the residents to live a life of optimism in a not so optimistic state.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Discussion question; do you believe that all humans should worry about the afterlife regardless of creed?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Quiz Question:

    According to Thomas, "Culture is the shared sum total of shared ________ and ________."

    (pg. 119)

    ReplyDelete
  16. Here is an article on why the nursing home system may be failing in the USA from a student's perspective (I.E: Lack of Nurses, Inadequate Certification, Lack of Benefits etc...).

    https://artifactsjournal.missouri.edu/2015/01/care-for-life-the-failing-system-of-nursing-home-care-in-the-united-states/

    ReplyDelete
  17. http://www.iyhusa.com/AginginPlaceFacts-Data.htm

    Research provided by the AARP on exactly what seniors want when aging and facing assisted living.

    ReplyDelete
  18. DQ: The ER is more attractive environment. The ER encounters people and unknown scenarios that is spontaneous and chaotic.

    Article on Elderly Care: http://www.bioethics.net/tags/nursing-home-care/
    Quiz Question: What did the nursing home director say about the ideal environment?

    ReplyDelete
  19. What is special about Beacon Hill Villages in Boston with regards to this class?

    ReplyDelete