One person can make a difference

The article by Susan Okie in the Washington Post, Teaching Hospitals How to Listen, is very poignant -- and disturbing. Reading the struggle of Ms. Okie's friend, Ms. Sylvia Stulz, to get hospitals to be more aware and responsive to their patients makes one shake their head and say "this should not be." Why should she, or anyone, have to struggle to teach hospitals -- doctors, nurses, staff members --to be responsive to patients and to treat them as human beings -- not as a burden?

This article also points out the courage of one woman who focused her energy -- not on her illness or on a "woe is me" attitude --but on changing the experiences she had gone through in the hospitals so that others can benefit. This is a perfect example of a boomer--- boomers are doers; they are action takers. We have been saying this repeatedly -- as the boomers age and have new experiences --ie. hospitals stays, etc--they will begin changing what is not working (after all, they did stop the Vietnam war, invent the internet, create MTV--- which was originally intended to be a channel for music videos).

This is why CareTALK was started -- because one Boomer mother saw there was nothing available when she became a caregiver for her daughter. This is the reason Google is going into health --- because of the experience Adam Bosworth, a VP at Google and a boomer, had while caring for his mother. There are inefficiencies in the health care system and in the information available for caregivers.

Boomers will change this. You can bet on it.