As a community nurse, driving is obviously pretty essential to your being able to work. I have come across non-driving community nurses (earlier this year) but they are still few(?). As a boy going to work with my father you could see how dependent he and workmates were upon a string of vans, cars and be able to drive both being on the 'right-side' of the law and his health. It was always an 'event' a new van, fitting out with racks, shelves, nooks, hooks and crannies for all sorts.*
Then as a community nurse older adults you come across individuals who still have their driving license, still have their car on the drive / front, and still have the car keys. Perhaps family have suggested to mum, dad, brother, sister, aunt: "Look, isn't it time to call it a day and give up driving?" Ouch! There's a crash - in itself.
Re-working the two-part draft paper on deprivation of liberty safeguarding, threshold concepts, Hodges' model within residential care, some thresholds are difficult, challenging to call. But some are safety critical, and perhaps need a more 'proactive' stance, without giving way to ageism. Is it the local community's job - the public's job to proffer a diagnosis: and what about persons on the world stage? Diagnosis by social media?
I quickly admired those people who, though reticent, gave up the literal fast-lane. Inevitably you wonder how you will react when the time comes. Will you have the humility, the goodness of grace to hand over the keys? To call it a day. With an ageing population, I've warned the children when driving to expect the unexpected. Cars going the wrong way. It was a struggle for my father: but safety as it so often does - did the trick - with the impetus of physical illness.
Sometimes, at work, after a family trying, and a fracas, when they've tried to hide / remove the car keys, suddenly a near-miss has upped-the-ratchet. Neighbours have seen the 'driver' reversing out into the road, with numerous car horns announcing the event. Then perhaps you are intercepted outside, a call comes to the day center (the transport is also going), the community team, or the GP's surgery (the neighbours have helped with medication).
I've had to speak to GPs for them to visit, meeting them on occasion. Do GPs - family physicians still have the same gravitas today?
This is a care transition: what can be a difficult one. A helpful point (diplomatic argument) that often gets through is the matter of car insurance and the status of the existing policy?
Does a political leader carry insurance?
It is difficult for all, a person's human rights, choices, freedom; their life story, former career perhaps, their health career - most definitely.
With events in the USA and the Democrat Party, and seeing the cover of The Economist I had to TAKE II.
Individual
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
HUMANISTIC -------------------------------------- MECHANISTIC
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
Group
cognitive state
memory
insight
Fitness for Office:
Mentally & Physically Legally
| |
safety of Others
community - duty of care -
safeguarding (however realised) | |
This is global problem that is set to increase and not just for reasons of health.
Ack. The Economist
Owen, D. (2009) In Sickness and in Power: Illnesses in Heads of Government during the Last 100 Years, London: Methuen Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-413-77689-1
Listen also ... BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
