| Letter - Assistance should stretch to rural areas
One quarter of America's population and one third of the elderly live in rural areas. The problem is that there are plenty of medical specialists in this country, they just are not in the right places for our rural populations. There is a way that Michigan could help solve its shortage of rural medical care specialists. Rural hospitals and doctors could be helped with medical specialty services by being connected to the state's tax-supported medical schools and their teaching hospitals with telemedicine technology. This technology is relatively inexpensive and is very sophisticated. Michigan's medical schools and their teaching hospitals have the necessary specialists on staff to help rural health care providers. Our medical school's duties and responsibilities should be expanded by legislation to include telemedicine consulting.
United States Taking care of parents who can no longer take care ...
Caring for parents who lost or may lose their autonomy because of ageing or disease (for instance Alzheimer) might create hard and unexpected situations. Some advices and precautions can help anticipate problems that may befall any of us in the future. A recent survey by AARP found that nearly 70 percent of adult children have not talked to their parents about issues related to aging. Some children avoid this most intimate of conversations because they believe their parents don't want to talk. Others think they know what their parents want. And some simply don't want to face the very real truth that if you are lucky enough to have parents who live well into their senior years, chances are good that disease, injury, frailty, even loneliness, will affect a parent's well-being.
While it's clear that having a conversation with aging parents is important, there is no blueprint on how to do it well.
|
