Old age is full of potentials, and we owe it to our elders and ourselves as a society to do what we can to help people reach them. medication safety is one step we can take. I start with a poem. The souls dark cottage battered and decayed letson new light through chinks that time has made. So what is this new light that is coming through? Let's take a look.

The first potential we'll talk about is called compression of morbidity. It is a kind of medical term. That means enjoying good health and functioning throughout most of one's old age, with a relatively short period of serious illness just before death. This is the ultimate best outcome. Come of medical care for the agent. The second one is social connections.

Erik Erikson and his landmark work on the human lifecycle identified generativity versus stagnation. As an important developmental task in later life. Older Persons have a need to establish a sense of care and concern for the well being of future generations. Some examples are parenting and grandparenting, volunteering and political activism. The raging grannies are one great example. They are a social political activist organization started by older women.

The third is self actualization. Erikson identified the last developmental stage of life as integrity versus despair. This is the need to integrate one's life experiences and come to the realization that life has meaning whether or not it has been successful in any socially defined sense. This could be Hard work. Older people need to feel well enough to do it. The fourth is wisdom.

Wisdom can be defined as expert knowledge about the important and fundamental matters of life, their interpretation and management. Now, wisdom doesn't always come with age, but the longer and healthier we live, the more experience we gain, the more chance we have of getting there. The fifth is creativity. There's just no best before date for this. Terry Pratchett fantasy novelist of the famous Discworld series continued writing good stuff until close to his death from Alzheimers. Artist grandma Moses started her illustrious career at age 78.

Author Miller Kaufmann, best known for co creating the cartoon Mr. Magoo published his first and critically acclaimed novel, a bowl of cherries at age 90. The list goes on, but I think you get the idea. My point is, while advances in pharmaceuticals are helping older adults to achieve their potentials as never before, medications can also cut potential short if not administered safely. In the next lesson, we will do a short quiz about some statistics. The questions are not here to test your knowledge or how well you have been paying attention. They are meant to get you thinking.

So all you have to do is learn