‘I have been fired by a patient - explicitly and to my face - just once. It happened during my first year after residency, and although I can no longer recall the patient’s name, I can still see her pretty face, carefully styled hair, and barely contained terror. Certainly, I remember when she stood up from the chair beside my exam-room desk and announced that she had liked and trusted me, but this changed everything. I was ruining her life. And I well remember watching her march down our clinic’s long hallway and through the glass front door toward the car she would almost certainly have to stop driving sometime soon, since, as required by California law, I would report her new dementia diagnosis to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).’
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1613342
This week’s NEJM
With the wide availability of Uber and other ride sharing services this is no longer the problem it was in the past. I basically stopped driving after a recent illness, and it hasn’t been a handicap. I don’t think I’ve ever waited more than 6 minutes for an Uber.
Being able to get in a car and go somewhere is a deeply ingrained habit, and giving that up has got to be very big deal. We’re lucky to be living in a time when we have choices, because the way America has developed over the past 75 years has left us stuck in places with no mass transit and no realistic hope of ever getting it. Right now companies like Lyft and Uber are very helpful, and within 10 years we may see self driving machines that will come and get us. I hope I live long enough to see that.
Uber is a problem for me, I live out in the country and I don’t have a smart phone. I’m hoping that by the time they wont let me drive anymore, I’ll be able to get a self driving car.
I can’t imagine navigating life today without my smartphone. I rarely use my laptop anymore.