It's natural to think of older folks, the elderly, as people needing the love & support of caregivers. At this particular moment, I have no fewer than eight Facebook friends dealing with their own medical situations, four of whom are dealing with life-threatening or permanently debilitating situations, each of those is a woman, three of them are mothers.
Whether it's someone recovering from major knee surgery or coordinating appointments to eradicate a cancer, all of them are in need of family & friend support.
Yesterday's May film - posted due to a computer glitch - is a TEDx talk by the quietly inspiring FRANCES MARCUS LEWIS (RN, MN, PhD, FAAN), presented this past January.
Perusing Dr. Lewis' credentials, listening to her, just LOOKING at her, has me thinking about my dear friend, Candace Nelson Zeigler, who brought her background as a nutritionist to her current work as an internist & family practitioner.
Frances Marcus Lewis & Candace Nelson Zeigler
Candy started what would become her medical career as a nutritionist advising eldercare facilities; Dr. Lewis' began as an RN, training & experience that's exceptional grounding for recognizing the importance of compassion in caregiving, for both those receiving & those providing. Both women bring to their current work ALL that came before. Powerful & empowering.
Starting out as a registered nurse, Dr. Lewis went on to earn a master's degree in nursing from the University of Washington, followed by a PhD from Stanford in the sociology of education from Stanford. She is currently Elizabeth Sterling Soule professor of health promotion and nursing in UW's Department of Family and Child Nursing.
I find myself hungry for more information about Frances Lewis. This woman deserves a Wikipedia page! She brings a powerful meshing of knowledge, skills & experience to her research on compassionate caregiving, to getting priceless evidence-based data on the impact of providing care & support on families & relationships. She's respected worldwide for teaming work as a careful, methodical research scientist with an inner drive to ease things for people dealing with chronic, life-threatening illnesses such as breast cancer - for them & for the family, friends, professionals providing care support..
When a team of UW Medical Center physicians & research scientists signed onto a project in the Ukraine on improving breast cancer detection & treatment, Dr. Lewis was on board & raring to go. She learned Russian to free her in communicating with their new colleagues & patients! To talk & to listen. A translator can convey symptoms & other parameters of a person's medical condition, but it takes listening to pick up the parameter's of someone's true condition, to take a reading of the heart as well as of an x-ray.
Did I mention that I love this woman?!
Dr. Lewis sums up her aim - "Someday, I hope there will be a time when nobody would think of providing physical care without providing support for a patient’s family, children and other relationships. For example, we know from our work that marriages, even very good marriages, are stressed by a diagnosis of breast cancer. This tension is part of the natural history of the illness. We expect it to happen but our interventions help to prevent its intensity and duration. Based on our team’s research, we know how to help, and we have tested our interventions.”
I sing to the heavens her team's work researching, getting that all-important evidence-based data. Her challenge in this present moment is to get the guidelines they've developed, the science, INTO everyday practice.
(Am intrigued that her research work appears not to have been done here, in the USA, but in Russia & the Ukraine. Can she be more innovative in Russia? I look forward to learning more.)
Dr. Lewis hopes "to expand our ongoing collaborative research with colleagues in medicine, public health, public policy, psychology, nursing and social work. Together, we can develop and test models of family-focused care that are practical and efficient in both the hospital and outpatient setting."
Dr. Connie Lehman, UW associate professor of radiology, an associate who knows Dr. Lewis well, describes her friend as bringing "a unique energy and passion to her work. (Fran Lewis) attacks every project, every challenge with unparalleled determination. When I think, at the end of our lives, how will we assess what we did with the time and the talents we were given, I do know the answer for Fran Lewis: She did everything in her power to make the world a better place."
Oh my gosh, I could write so much more! And I will!! But I am due for coffee with a friend in less than an hour & still need to drop down to Be Well Bakery to nab two slices of their delectable Coconut Cream Cake, so have got to wrap this up.
Enjoy the "movie" - a must-see for everyone.
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