derogatory

My female owner was peeved yesterday. I think she was just projecting her annoyance about the aged care placement in the situation.

First of all, she didn’t feel like going to school at 1730hr (in the cold) to have clinical supervision. The last few sessions had been a waste of time. She was clocking supervision hours for the sake of hitting 50hours. She wanted to call in sick/ busy/ forgot but stuck to going, because of the conviction she received after reading I-Fren’s blog on how he handled his less-than-impressive placement woes.

So, she went for supervision, still disgruntled inside her.

During supervision, her clinical supervisor told them that she attended an aging talk delivered by an Associate Professor who is an expert in aging issues and there was an exchange that went something like that:

AP: “How many of you expect to die in a nursing home when you grow old?”

5 hands (out of 25 people) went up.

AP: “All of you should put up your hand, unless you want to be a burden to others.”


My female owner, normally placid and quiet, spoke up without much hesitation.

“I don’t think I agree that taking care of our aged loved ones should be termed as a burden (silently: And AP’s words contradicts her actions. Her choice of words only reinforces negative perceptions about aging and this contradicts her outward efforts to advocate for older people). I mean, in my culture, we see looking after our older people as an honour and duty, after all the years they spent bringing up us. Difficult to look after maybe, but no, not a burden.”

Yes, she was upset with the hypocrisy. What’s this nonsense (note: original word was censored) about needing to provide better psychological care/ services to older people, when aging experts when speaking from their professional capacity, uses derogatory terms to describe older people. No wonder there is a lack of healthcare workers in this field.