EUEC hosted a GA-HERO meeting on Friday, April 1. 

Below is the first submission to our new series in which members describe a book they believe would be interesting for other members.  More submissions are most welcome!

Click here to read about Being Mortal

We received the following from Mary Bower.  This seems to be a great opportunity to help in research particularly relevant to seniors and earn a bit of spending money as well!

 

Once again, our members are invited to participate in a program offered by the Caregiver Support Program:

Do you need help managing stress as a caregiver?

 

Are you having difficulty juggling work and caregiving simultaneously?

 

If you answered yes to one or both of the questions above, you may want to attend the following free workshop:

 

 

 

Caregiver Resilience: How to Make Stress Your Friend

April 19, 2016

12:00PM-1:30PM

School of Nursing, 203

Facilitated by: Robin Huskey, LCSW Faculty Staff Assistance Program

 

Register Here:

 

 

 

 

James W. Curran, MD, MPH

Dean, Rollins School of Public Health

 

In 1995 James W. Curran was appointed Professor of Epidemiology and Dean of the Rollins School of Public Health. 

 

Graduating from the University of Notre Dame, he received his MD from the University of Michigan and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. In 1981 Dr. Curran coordinated the task force on acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and then led the HIV/AIDS Division. While at the CDC, he attained the rank of the Assistant Surgeon General. 

 

Dr. Curran is a fellow of the American Epidemiologic Society, the American College of Preventive Medicine, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Author or co-author of more than 260 scholarly publications, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. He was given the Surgeon General's Medal of Excellence in 1996 and the John Snow Award from the American Public Health Association in 2003. 

 

Dr. Curran is an adjunct Professor of Medicine and Nursing and Co-Director and Principal Investigator of the Emory Center for AIDS Research.  He is immediate past Chair of the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine and served on the Executive Committee of the Association of Schools of Public Health. Additionally, he holds an endowed chair known as the James W. Curran Dean of Public Health.

 

The Lecture and Lunch are made possible by a generous donation from Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhu Sheth.  The lecture is also sponsored by the Emory Alumni Association. 

 

The lecture will be in Governors Hall in the Miller-Ward Alumni House on April 13, 11:30-1:00.  

 

Reservations are necessary, and may be made by clicking here.  

 

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The topic for the day was "Helping Younger Colleagues Get Their Heads around Retirement"; it centered on the advantages that pre-retirement counseling by retired faculty can bring to colleagues about to go through that transition.

 

EUEC member Stephen Nowicki, Candler Professor of Psychology Emeritus, provided a keynote presentation on the all-important psychological aspects of the retirement process and graciously consented to allow GA-HERO to post his accompanying PowerPoint presentation on its Web site.  (He had given a similar talk to Emory pre-retirees at a very successful session sponsored by the Emeritus College on the second of March.  That talk may be viewed by clicking here.)

 

Other Emory attendees at this meeting were Julianne Daffin, Gretchen Schulz, Holly York, and John Bugge, who is the Vice-President and Treasurer of GA-HERO.

 

The role the Emeritus College plays in GA-HERO continues to provide us with a very useful window into the operations of our counterparts in the state's system of higher education.

 

--John Bugge 

 

• He founded the present Theater Emory in 1982 and helped integrate it with the Department of Theater Studies; it is now nationally recognized as an innovative hybrid enterprise of faculty, active professionals, and students.

• In 1988 he founded the international W.B. Yeats Foundation at Emory to promote greater understanding and appreciation of Yeats as a poet, dramatist, and cultural activist.

• From 1989 to 1993 he was the Executive Director of the Yeats International Theatre Festival at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, the National Theatre of Ireland.

• In 2002 Flannery was honored with a Governor's Award in the Humanities by the Georgia Humanities Council for helping to advance understanding of the influence of Irish culture on the heritage and distinctive culture of the American South.

• In 2004 he helped to found the Irish Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

• In 2010 he was named an International Associate Artist at the Abbey, where he continues to work on developing a Yeats Creative and Performing Arts Studio.

• In his years as an active faculty member at Emory, Flannery carried on his active research, contributing articles to The New York Times, Performing Arts Journal, and the Irish University Review, and producing a revised edition of his definitive study, W.B Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice (Yale, 1989).

• In the first category, his very successful local production of the Southern Celtic Christmas Concert is now being distributed nationally by American Public Television to PBS stations across the country. Featuring top talents in Southern and Irish traditional music and a rare interview with the late Seamus Heaney, the program won the Southeast Emmy Award in Outstanding Achievement in Arts and Entertainment in 2012.

• Flannery also continues to serve as a member of the Global Irish Network; he was appointed to the position by the Irish government in 2010 to advise on issues related to the "Irish diaspora."

• For the past two years Flannery has been engaged as an advisor to a group from the city of Sligo, which is developing a Yeats Interpretive Center featuring W.B. Yeats and his father, the painter Jack Yeats.

• In June of 2015 Flannery collaborated with the Irish Consulate of Atlanta to produce at the Carlos Museum a program of readings, critical commentaries, and musical performances entitled Still Here/Here Still on the enduring power of Yeats's artistry and poetic philosophy.

• In 2015 Flannery was elected President of the Metropolitan Atlanta Association of Phi Beta Kappa; in that capacity, he organized a series of lectures on issues important to the University community.

• Professor Flannery continues with his academic research and writing on two fronts: a book - which will include audio recordings - entitled Heart Mysteries: Traditional Love Songs of Ireland; and a second book, entitled Memories and Prophesies: A Theatrical Analysis of the Plays of W.B. Yeats.

On Monday evening at Oxford College, and Tuesday afternoon in the Woodruff Library, Tiffany Stern delivered lectures on Shakespeare and the First Folio.  Below is a report on her talk at Oxford: 

 

On Monday evening, March 28, on the Oxford College campus, members of the College and the Oxford/Covington community joined in a celebration that is going on county-wide, state-wide, country-wide, and, indeed, world-wide during this year, the 400^th year since the death of William Shakespeare.  A lecture on "Shakespeare and the Secrets of the First Folio" was offered by a specialist in Shakespeare from "the other Oxford," as those of us in this Oxford community like to call it.  Dr. Tiffany Stern, a Professor of Early Modern Drama at Oxford University and the Beaverbrook and Bouverie Fellow and Tutor in English at University College there, shared fascinating information on "the book that gave us Shakespeare," the first collection of his plays, assembled by two of the actors in the company of actors to which Shakespeare belonged and published in 1623, seven years after his death in 1616.

 

The collection is the only original source for 18 of Shakespeare's plays, and without it, those plays unpublished during his lifetime, acclaimed by consensus as some of the greatest plays ever written, wouldn't be known to us at all, plays like "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," "Twelfth Night," and "As You Like It."  It is hard to imagine the body of world literature without such works in it! And there is no one anywhere who knows more than Dr. Stern does about the process by which a variety of written and printed and enacted versions of the plays (and bits of the plays) finally yielded the Folio versions thereof--a process that involved innumerable challenges for the editors of the book and that resulted in not a few oddities and errors that have been challenging everyone else ever since.

 

Only a few original copies of the First Folio can still be found, of which some are in the possession of the Folger Shakespeare Library on Washington, D.C.  And it was planning for the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death that prompted the Folger to send several of its Folios forth on a national traveling exhibition, choosing one site in each state (one from among many applicants) to host a Folio visit--and coordinate it with a variety of other Shakespeare-related activities. Thanks to Emory's own pre-eminent Shakespearean, Sheila Cavanagh, and the exciting plethora of plans proffered by the planning committee she gathered from Emory and beyond, Emory University was chosen as the host site for Georgia, and though the Folio itself will not be on display in the Carlos Museum on the Atlanta campus of the University until the fall, the rich roster of "Shakespeare-related activities" began right here at Emory's birthplace with the lecture by Dr. Stern on Monday evening.  She gave Folio talks in Atlanta on Tuesday and Wednesday, as well, but we were the first to hear what she had to say on "The Secrets of the First Folio." And this reporter can report that the talk was much enjoyed by all. Thanks to the College, and in particular the Pierce Institute at the College, and to the Oxford College Community Classroom program for sponsoring Dr. Stern's visit.  We will keep you apprised as other events of interest to Shakespeareans in the area are scheduled, "to be or not to be" attended as you please.

 

--Gretchen Schulz, as written for the Covington News

 

Click here to see the website of Folio-related activities at Emory 

 

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Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Book report by Stewart Roberts, Jr. M.D.

My Dad died at home when I was nine years old.  Three aunts came to take me and my younger brother Bill from our farm to nearby Stone Mountain while the hearse came to take Dad's body to the funeral home.  My grandmother died in her daughter's home.  Before 1945 most people died in their homes.  Now, most die in nursing homes, hospitals or assisted living facilities.  Death away from home is very expensive and shoots up Medicare costs.

Atul Gawande, M.D. is a Harvard surgeon.  When a surgeon writes a book, pay attention, for he has something important to say.  Being Mortal is a number 1 New York Times best-seller about striving for the best individual path to death.  Several interesting stories follow about the development of assisted living homes, nursing homes, doctor-patient relationships, and end-of-life stories of three individuals who, aided by Dr. Gawande, made their own health choices to the very end.

A young girl grew up witnessing the needs of her grandmother who had suffered a stroke and lived in their home.  Later, as a married academic, she and her husband designed and built the country's first Assisted Living Home in Portland, Oregon, in 1982, a concept rapidly emulated across the country.  The idea was to provide independent living for its residents, with step-wise increasing levels of care as needed.  There is a constant conflict between the freedom of the independent resident and the organizational needs of uniformity of care and safety.

Bill Thomas was a bright but defiant kid, a "super salesman."  He could always handle rejection!  He graduated from Harvard Medical School and in an era of sub-specialization chose Family Medicine.  Later with family and farm responsibilities, he traded in his ER night shift to become Director of a nursing home.  He was immediately disturbed by the lifeless atmosphere within the nursing home and he set out to attack its boredom, loneliness, and helplessness.  With the cooperation of staff, authorities, and politicians, he brought LIFE into the nursing home.  Live plants and two parakeets were placed in each room; dogs and cats enlivened the residents who took on their active care, and the front lawn was converted to a garden, planted and attended by residents.  Happy and involved residents now shared their activities with staff enlivening conversations all around.

Social research found people did better in groups of twenty or fewer.  In Boston, the New Bridge nursing home was designed and built around small pods, "a household," with rooms for sixteen residents surrounding a common living space with dining room, kitchen and activity room -- like a household, designed to improve the life of the residents.

Hospice care and home hospice care are relatively new developments for the dying patient.  Home hospice care is a strong addition for those who wish to die at home among family.  Home hospice care by trained professionals is comforting, supportive, and instructive.

In 1992, two medical ethicists described three patterns of doctor-patient relationships:  the paternalistic, informative and interpretive.  The paternalistic is an authoritarian: "Dr. Knows Best -- You need this surgical procedure...or you will get worse."  (Fee unknown.)  Watch out!  Next is the informative: "Dr. Informative" lists the therapeutic options and the patient makes a selection.  (Fee unknown.)  The interpretive doctor lists all therapeutic options and assists the patient in making the best individual choice.  (Fee unknown.)  A cancer surgeon may first inquire, "What is important to you?  What are your concerns?"  Such information leads to a SHARED DECISION between doctor and patient. 

Almost two decades after medical school, Gawande became quite concerned about "an avalanche of unnecessary medical care harming patients physically and financially."  ("Overkill..."  The New Yorker, May 11, 2015)  Expanding on these thoughts one might suggest a WRITTEN DOCUMENT between doctor and patient well in advance of a proposed surgical or expensive diagnostic procedure.  Such a written document would list the specific indications for the proposed procedure, its contraindications, complications, outcomes, options and fees.  This document is signed, witnessed, dated and copied to the patient.  The patient is better informed and protected and the doctor and institution more accountable.  There would be less surgery. 

I am a doctor myself, and my experience confirms that doctors are detail-oriented.  Surgeons by nature may be particularly obsessive-compulsive, perhaps less skilled in verbal communication.  The most technically proficient may even occupy a lower rung on the ladder of the autistic spectrum disorder and be given to occasional angry outbursts.  The uninformed patient is not protected from unnecessary surgery.  There are no "lemon laws" for inappropriate surgery.  Once performed, inappropriate surgery cannot be undone.  The patient and society are more protected by the INFORMATIVE PATIENT DOCUMENT.

Dr. Gawande brings the reader along on the end-of-life journey of three patients, one of whom is his active father, a surgeon.  Palliative physicians have learned to ask a question, await an answer, then ask another question.  "What is it you understand about your illness?"  Await answer.  "What are your fears?"  Await answer.  "What is important to you?"  Await answer.  Each of the three lives demonstrates the wonder of freedom of choice to the very end, when physics and biology take over and life ends.  It takes courage for doctors and institutions and society to change our healthcare at the end of life.  What is your understanding of the two-word title, Being Mortal?

1.  Flatlined.  Resuscitating American Medicine, by Guy L. Clifton, MD, Rutgers University Press, 2009

2.  Unaccountable.  What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Healthcare, by Marty Mkary, MD, Bloomsburg Press, 2012

3.  Waking Up Blind.  Lawsuits Over Eye Surgery, by Tom Harbin, MD, Langdon Street Press, 2009.

4.  All in the Timing: From Operating Room to the Board Room, by Charles R. Hatcher, Jr., MD, Author House, 2011

5  When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi, MD, Random House, 2016
 
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