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Managing the Elderly
North Miami Beach, FL May 19, 2001 Aaron H.
Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then, Opinions pro or con are welcome.
MANAGING THE ELDERLY
Last Monday evening we got ourselves over to the Parkway Hospital where we
expected to learn things about arthritis. The Hospital staff promised us a
lecture and questions and answers led by a surgeon on their staff followed
by a light supper.
Have you ever entered a packed room where there were only old people? On
this evening we did. There were many feeble looking persons of both sexes.
Could we be seen to belong there and did we look as old and decrepit as they
all did? I don't think there was any one younger than 70 and many had
walkers and canes. This is not to say they are not good people!
There were more than sixty of us seated in long rows along tables with
their narrow ends facing a screen. A slide projector was set up and there
were silvery orthopedic replacement parts for hips and knees placed on the
far end of the middle table. The doctor is a youngish man who used a
microphone and a clicker to change the slides. He seemed out of his element
and he repeated himself and did not so much as explain as to read from notes
that replicated the slides thrown up on the screen.
I fault ourselves thinking we would get educated and a free light supper.
I fault the planners of this session for not seeing in advance what the
speaker was aiming at. I do not fault our leaving before the end of the
lecture and finding our light supper at the "Ham and Eggery" not too far
from the Hospital.
What was at fault was the notion that this decrepit group needed a lecture
which was the kind of pre-operation run through of the steps that a knee or
hip replacement would require. The professionals who ran this thing put it
before us as an educational program. The surgeon used it to advertise his
knowledge (he failed to impress us).
We particularly resented our being treated as pool of potential patients
for this quack. We were being managed and felt that we were expected to sign
up at the end of the lecture - without questions and answers that we felt we
needed for our aches and pains. Carol's Evaluation: out of 10.
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