Literature Review

Seniors are embracing marijuana, which offers relief — and riskThe Washington Post, by Fenit Nirappil; 1/2/24

A medication mistake cost a Lockport woman her life. A new grant aims to help others avoid same fateThe Buffalo News, by Scott Scanlon; 1/2/24 In a perfect health care system, patients who ended up in the hospital would start to feel better soon and go home with a recovery plan, along with any medications designed to help in that process. ... “All medications have side effects, and some are especially harmful in older adults,” UB officials said in announcing a four-year, $1.95 million grant focused on improving medication prescribing.

We’re college students with ideas of how to promote senior living careers to a younger generation

South Carolina NASCAR legend Cale Yarborough has diedPost and Courier, by Chris Day; 12/13/23 South Carolina racing legend Cale Yarborough died the morning of Dec. 31 at McLeod Hospice House in Florence. The Timmonsville native is closely linked to historic Darlington Raceway where he made his big-league debut. ... Yarborough was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2012 as part of the stock-car shrine’s third class of inductees. NASCAR Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim France called Yarborough one of the toughest competitors ever to compete in NASCAR.

Corporations award $20K in grants to make hospice care accessible in Texarkana areaTexarkana Gazette; 1/1/24A local nonprofit has received $20,000 in grants to make end-of-life care accessible. Tyson Foods, Weyerhaeuser and Union Pacific recently awarded the funding to Hospice of Texarkana's Diversity & Inclusive Care Project. The project is a comprehensive educational and awareness program to address demographic disparities in hospice and palliative care in Northeast Texas and Southwest Arkansas. It includes staffing, training, and community outreach.

A Birmingham mother draws on personal tragedy to assist grieving familiesAlabama Reflection, by Ralph Chapoco; 1/2/24Ella Shakeel has been volunteering with Faith in Action Alabama for five years. In that time, she worked exclusively with victims of violent crime as they came to terms with not only the tragedy of losing a loved one, but also with dealing with the logistics of laying them to rest. The source of her empathy stems from the tragedy that she herself has endured.

Here are the new state healthcare laws taking effect in 2024NOTE: IN PROCESS  ... have to head out early to radiation ... Joy

Offering ‘emotional first aid’ to people in shock over a sudden deathLas Vegas Review-Journal; 12/30/23When first responders in Clark County encounter relatives, friends, co-workers and bystanders upset about a sudden death, they contact volunteers of the Trauma Intervention Program of Southern Nevada to come to the scene. 

History despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. ~Maya Angelou

Doctors are pushing Hollywood for more realistic depictions of death and dying on TVKQED, by April Dembosky; 12/28/23We've seen it so many times. A young, handsome man rushed into the emergency room with a gunshot wound. A flurry of white coats racing the clock: CPR, the heart zapper, the order for a scalpel. Stat! Then finally, the flatline. This is Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider's biggest pet peeve. Where are the TV scripts about the elderly grandmothers dying of heart failure at home? What about an episode on the daughter still grieving her father's fatal lung cancer, ten years later? "Acute, violent death is portrayed many, many, many times more than a natural death," says Ungerleider, an internal medicine doctor and founder of End Well, a nonprofit focused on shifting the American conversation around death.

Chatty AI robot companions help seniors fight loneliness: ‘She makes them smile and brings joy’News8, by Terry Spencer; 12/31/23CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — Joyce Loaiza lives alone, but when she returns to her apartment at a Florida senior community, the retired office worker often has a chat with a friendly female voice that asks about her day. ... The women are some of the first in the country to receive the robot ElliQ, whose creators, Intuition Robotics, and senior assistance officials say is the only device using artificial intelligence specifically designed to alleviate the loneliness and isolation experienced by many older Americans. ... The robots are mostly distributed by assistance agencies in New York, Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Washington state, but can also be purchased individually for $600 a year and a $250 installation fee. Skuler wouldn’t say how many ElliQs have been distributed so far, but the goal is to have more than 100,000 out within five years.

From -10.6% to 11.1%: 34 systems ranked by operating marginsBecker's Hospital CFO Report, by Alan Condon adn Madeline Ashley; 12/29/23Hospitals began 2023 with a median operating margin of -0.9%, but that figure has increased steadily month over month to hit 2% in November — the ninth consecutive month of positive margins. Despite a modest positive turning point for some hospitals and health systems this year, Fitch Ratings projects 2024 to be another "make or break" year for a significant portion of the sector.

'This Is Not Rocket Science': A Doctor's Mission to Overcome Children's Fear of NeedlesKQED, by April Dembosky; 12/27/23Any new parent has been through it: The distress of seeing your child scream at the doctor’s office. The torture of having to hold them down as the clinician sticks them with one vaccine after another. ... “We are taught to see pain as an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of good treatment,” said Dr. Diane Meier, a palliative care specialist at Mount Sinai in New York. “We learn to repress that feeling of distress at the pain we are causing because otherwise we can’t do our jobs.” During her medical training, Meier had to hold kids down for procedures, a task she hated. It drove her away from pediatrics. She went into geriatrics instead and later helped lead the modern movement to promote palliative care in medicine.