It was Margaret Mead who staunchly proclaimed, “Sooner or later I’m going to die, but I’m not going to retire!” I wholeheartedly agree. However, I certainly do take plenty of time for leisure, travel, and family. Plus, my work is interesting and allows me to interface with very smart individuals pursuing a common cause: healthcare […]
What critical lessons have you learned in life so far? One day when my older son was about mid-thirties, he said to me, “It certainly would be great to know, in advance, which of the life decisions you make are pivotal ones.” I agreed, and was happy that a child of mine had such insight. […]
It is, unfortunately, a common scenario. An older adult falls (as many as one-third to one-half of us, unfortunately, do; every 11 seconds, in fact). A fracture results, warranting a hospital visit followed by in-patient rehab in a Skilled Nursing Facility AKA SNF (40% of the time). The injured recovers fully and that’s the end […]
We’ve certainly come a long way from the pre-Florence Nightingale days, when one of the earliest hospitals, the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, offered dark, unsanitary, poorly ventilated wards, multiple patients per bed (many of whom were infectious), and a mortality rate of more than 40%. And yet, we’re still struggling with complications related to hospitalizations – […]
Sometimes, when there’s a difficult concept to grasp or a difficult decision to be made, it helps to go back to the basics. Start with what you know. For many of us, particularly lifelong learners, and the young, a picture – or a hands-on experience – truly is worth a thousand words. Compare trying to […]
There’s a time and a place to remain quiet. Schools now have mandatory silent sustained reading time, where students cannot speak but are engaged in the pages of a book for 20 minutes. Movie theaters warn us to silence our cell phones when it’s time for the show to begin. Silence is indeed golden at […]
It seems like just a blink of an eye ago, but 1981 – the year I officially stepped into the home care arena with my own in-home care agency – was truly, technologically speaking, a lifetime ago. Although it’s incredible to realize, since 1981, we’ve lived through the invention of IBM’s very first PC, soft […]
How do you define success? When a group of 5- to 16-year-olds were asked that very question, their answers ranged from being good at karate to being Justin Bieber. Meanwhile, a poll of the elderly (with a mean age of 80) viewed self-acceptance and self-contentment as evidence of success. And for those of us who […]
