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76 lines
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4.6 KiB
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<title>Dr. Christine Karen Cassel</title>
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<img src="../img/desc_asterix.gif" width="36" height="26" alt="Asterix" class="imgleft" />
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<p class="photoTitle">Dr. Christine Karen Cassel</p>
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<!-- BEGIN DISPLAY OF Transcript -->
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<p>When I first began in this field, the standard rounds we would
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make in the hospital: we would come in, talk with the patient,
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listen to their heart and their lungs, maybe feel the abdomen.
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If the patient was in a wet bed it wasn’t our problem,
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it was a nursing problem. You would leave the room never knowing
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whether the patient was able to walk or not.</p>
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<p>And if the patient was confused, all too often you said,
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“Well, that’s sundowning, that happens with older people.”
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So the whole range of functional issues that really make a
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difference between whether an elder person can live alone,
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or has to be in a nursing home, were things that we didn’t have a
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clue about how to address. Urinary incontinence, mental confusion,
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and walking or ambulation, and the strength of somebody’s ability
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to get themselves to the bathroom, or even out of bed.</p>
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<p>And maybe I’m just a sensible woman or something, but it just seemed
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to me there needed to be a lot more attention on these common problems
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of older people, which we weren’t learning enough about. And so the idea
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of having a field of geriatric medicine where I could do that,
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that would be morally needed and make a contribution to people who needed
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help. At the same time that it would be full of important ethical issues
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that needed study and analysis, and that were philosophically challenging.
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The reason why intergenerational connection is so important is to give
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real meaning and vitality to our aging society. Because we’re moving
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from a society where a hundred years ago 5 percent of the population was over 65,
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to 20 years from now 20 percent of the population will be over 65.
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That means one out of five people, everywhere you go—in the movie theaters,
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in the grocery stores, in the airports, on the golf courses—
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wherever you are, are going to be “senior citizens.” To marginalize
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and make irrelevant one-fifth of the population is just not a smart
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thing for our society to do. Plus, people are healthier and more
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independent as they age these days, and that’s going to continue, too.
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So we can’t afford as a society not to take advantage of the skills
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and contribution of that whole segment of our population.
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So it’s very important to me that we find ways that younger people
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can interact with older people, to counteract stereotypes, ageism,
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negative attitudes about their own aging, and to help reinforce the
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connections within their own families.</p>
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<p>Many of my colleagues in medicine say to me, “How can you do this. It’s so
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depressing, and it’s so frustrating, because nobody ever gets better.”
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Well, if you look at most of medicine, there are very few dramatic cures
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anymore. What we’ve done is we’ve managed to make people able to live
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better with chronic illness—with heart disease, even with cancer.
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And geriatrics is just like that.</p>
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<p>When you help somebody live better, with multiple medical problems,
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or even help them die better, at the end of their life,
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their family and that patient are hugely grateful. And I find it
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very rewarding and so I tell people "what do you mean?"
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I think this is actually a very rewarding and satisfying field.</p>
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