By Lissette Nunez

Staff Writer

CSUSM welcomed a guest speaker, Dr. Dennis McCullough, a physician and geriatrician who has brought a compassionate approach to caring for the elders.

McCullough visited campus on Oct. 23 and educated students about his ideas. Dr. McCullough’s approach begins with what he identifies as Slow Medicine, a paradigm for partnerships between elders and their loved ones who care for them. Moreover, it is a philosophy and set of practices for approaching your life as you age in relationship with the health problems that come along in due time.

Differing from other healthcare systems, Slow Medicine was strictly developed through the beliefs and ideas brought by older people on how elders should be cared for. Slow Medicine combines an understanding coming from gerontology, which is the boarder study of how older people are in the world, along with study with their psychology, sociology, family relationships, economics and geriatrics; the study of health problems in order people.

What Dr. McCullough hopes to bring is a connection with Slow Medicine and Palliative Care in our healthcare system. Palliative Care is a care system for those who are diagnosed with a chronic illness. This form of care centers on the needs of the person and focuses on their quality of life, regardless of age. What Slow Medicine and Palliative Care share is a focus on the individual, an engagement of the family and also on the whole person. The only difference is that Palliative Care is a form of healthcare that focuses on people with a chronic disease, whereas Slow Medicine focuses just on the elderly.

Slow Medicine demonstrates the most supportive approach when dealing with the care for our elders because as McCullough explains, “slow medicine brings together the best ‘medical caring’ with our age-old traditions of support and caring for elder and their families.”

For more information on Slow Medicine, please refer to Dr. Dennis McCullough’s book, My Mother, Your Mother.