Join us for an honest and heartfelt conversation about the realities of student caregiving with Felicia Norrington, social work director at Georgia State University and former caregiver to her mother for twelve years! Hosted by Nirvana Tari, Chief Patient Officer at CareYaya.
In this deeply personal episode, Felicia shares the lessons she learned from twelve years of caring for her mother while building her career in higher education, revealing the hard truth she wishes someone had told her in year one: you cannot do everything by yourself. Discover why caregiver burnout is not just exhausting but measurable through tools like the Caregiver Strain Index, and learn practical strategies for balancing work, caregiving, and personal development when it feels impossible to do all three.
From why your life should not stop just because you are caregiving to how crisis management and care coordination are legitimate leadership skills that belong on your resume, Felicia offers guidance for the millions of Americans (including countless college students) navigating this isolating journey. She tackles the uncomfortable truths about healthcare inequity, the critical importance of advance care planning conversations (no matter how awkward), and why rural communities face devastating barriers to memory care and specialist access.
Key insights include how universities can identify and support student caregivers through simple intake surveys and peer support groups that cost nothing to implement, why social workers bring essential advocacy to healthcare teams that too often exclude family caregivers from decisions, and practical advice on reframing caregiving experience as project management and service coordination skills for future employers.
Brought to you by CareYaya, America's number one rated solution for in-home senior care, providing industry-leading quality care at the most affordable rates. CareYaya is known especially for delivering the most reliable and affordable overnight senior care and 24/7 care in many major metro areas including Atlanta, LA, New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
This episode is essential for college students juggling classes and caregiving responsibilities, young adults caring for parents while building careers, university administrators seeking to support hidden student populations, or anyone who needs permission to ask for help and prioritize self care without guilt.
Episode Transcript:
Hello and good morning, everybody. Thanks so much for being here with me today. I am with the one and only Felicia Norrington. How are you doing, Miss Felicia, today? I'm good. How are you? Good. So excited to have you on here all the way from Atlanta. I have been really looking forward to this podcast, took a bit of a hiatus, revamped things, and ready to get back into it. So thank you for being here with us today. And thank you too for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss. Oh, well, I'm really, really glad and excited for these questions because we're going to get into some really awesome things. And y'all already know we're going to go ahead and start it with the lightning round. So first question for you is, if you could add one class to every college curriculum, what would it be? It would definitely be a professional development class that helps to build soft skills. That would be things that are helpful in the workplace like um business writing and you know other skills that you know you don't necessarily get your classes yeah that's actually really cool and now that i think about it i feel like carry out with our students that's kind of what we do because you know where else are you going to learn like bedside manner um how to speak to family members how to you know be in a situation where someone has like a serious illness without actually being put in that situation. That's really good. I like that one. Right. And just understanding what it's like to work in an environment and what the expectations are and things like that. That's okay. Absolutely. I completely agree. On that note, most underrated caregiving skill that's actually a superpower. Um, the ability to manage a crisis, crisis management or crisis intervention is something that happens in the workplace. And certainly when you're dealing, um, with somebody who's sick, you don't want a crisis, but you know, there are times where you can't predict things and you have to be able to react very quickly. And that's a skill that you need oftentimes in many workplaces too. So I think. That's one that's underrated that doesn't really get recognized as a skill. That's actually a really good point because, yeah, that's, you know, working in stressful situations is something that will come up throughout your life. And caregivers are kind of dealing with that maybe almost every day. So add it to the resume. And what is one thing you wish someone had told you in year one of caregiving for your mom? that I couldn't do everything by myself because I didn't really, and I think that's a common thing with caregivers. I think they don't, um, one, you don't really realize you're getting into this situation that's going to last longer than you expect it to. And you think, okay, well, I can do this and I can do that. And I certainly had that experience. It was quite a while before I realized, okay, I can't do all of this without some assistance. And you can get stuck really easy in that pattern, which of course causes stress and other things too as well. So That's the one thing I wish someone had been, stayed on me about. There were people who kind of said it, but I was like, no, I'll still be okay. So that wasn't the case. There's so much guilt that also goes into being a caregiver as well that we really don't talk about enough. And the burnout is so real, especially if it's somebody that you love, even if it's your mom, even if it's your dad, sister, brother, kid. I mean, there's like a lot... You can't pour from an empty cup. And the more that you kind of take care of yourself, the more you're realistically taking care of your loved one as well. Exactly. You can't. You can't. Because if you run yourself in the ground, then you won't be able to take care of them. Or yourself. Or yourself. And self-care is just very important in a caregiver's journey because you never know how long that caregiver journey may last. Right. And the longer it takes for you to realize it, the more impact it's having on your health. You know, there are plenty of studies that show the effects of caregiving on, you know, long term effects on caregiving on, you know, caregiver health. So very important that you recognize early that you need to take care of yourself. There's actually a thing called the Caregiver Strain Index. And we recently were, you know, approved to do a study with Emory University on the impacts of having respite care on the Caregiver Strain Index and how it helps with, you know, regulating and things like that. So this goes right in line with that and that there's so much There's so much that you can do if you take care of yourself first. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Good. That's good. That's good to know because the more research that's done on that and the more studies that are done on that, the more assistance that can be. Yes. And social supports will be put into place for our caregivers because Lord knows we need them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, Felicia, of course, you are a social worker working in higher education. You are also your mom's caregiver for twelve years. And so maybe talk to me about some what are the top two or three things that you learned that every caregiver, whether they're a student or a family caregiver, should know? I think that the one of the top things is making sure that you have an understanding of your family members or your loved ones conditions. So you'll know where to source support from. You know, there are plenty of resources out there for you because that's one of the things that's very difficult to manage as a caregiver, which is where do I find resources? Where do I find assistance? And there's a lot of disease-specific resources for individuals, but you don't really think of that in the middle of caring for somebody. So it's important to talk to your health, the health team that you have involved, and to build a health team. That's probably one of the two things. You've got to advocate Um, hopefully you will have good physicians involved with whatever you're doing. I was very lucky for that. I mean, we have a big, great family physician, so he was very helpful, but not every care, you know, not every doctor is, you know, like that. Not every physician is like that. So advocate for yourself, um, and learn what resources there are available that can, can help you and then ask for help. finding them because what you'll find as a caregiver is you're, you know, trying to find the time to contact people and things like that can be a lot. So try to use, you know, get whatever assistance that you need or ask for the assistance that you need from people that are close to you. So that was probably one of the bigger things. And also getting an understanding of how insurance works. It's terrible that you have to deal with all of this stuff, but you do have to. You need to understand about insurance. Any legal issues like guardianship or all these other things, the more information. I was lucky because my mother was big on end-of-life planning for her and my dad. So they had advanced directors and all these kind of things, but a lot of people don't know anything about them. That's great. Yeah, that's the thing that I feel like that's a practical piece of advice that everyone should take right now is have the conversation now because there's, it's never too soon. You know, I think that these are things that will make you, it's, it's, it's a hard conversation. It's an awkward conversation. You don't want to be like, Hey mom and dad, what do you want to do if X, Y, or Z happens? But it's better to know it's, it's, I feel like the best thing is to kind of like, It always is. It's, you know, even when it comes to like, I talk about this all the time too, like a lot of times people are afraid of screening tests or even finding out that they do have something like Alzheimer's, dementia or something like that. They're like, oh, if I don't know, that's better. But I'm like, no, if you find out, then sooner you're able to kind of help yourself and entertain and make things better. And it's going to not be great finding out. It's not going to feel good. But then once you do know, then you have a clear path ahead of you of, okay, these are the steps that I need to take. so yeah that's that's a really good piece of advice as well it's just kind of like planning things out ahead of time and really like what do your parents actually want because right might be a time where they aren't able to advocate for themselves and you're their advocate so it's good to know what their real true wishes are exactly and as much of that as you can do in advance that good is good but i also tell caregivers because i have had experiences where people didn't have that you know, happen. They weren't, they didn't have the luxury of having that. And I told them that's okay. You just have to figure out what to do and make sure you get help, contact, you know, the resources, you know, ask for help from, you know, your, again, your medical team to know where to get started. Cause some people get very upset when they, you know, realize that they should have had all this stuff done. That's okay. You still just live the moment and do, and, you know, can do and that's that's what's important a hundred percent and everybody's on your side you just need to ask oh yeah you just need to ask and start having those conversations and yeah i yeah i love it i love all of this so i'm curious how did caregiving sort of affect your career trajectory and um what advice would you give to someone who's trying to balance both caregiving and their career right now well i was fortunate because my employer was very helpful um in terms flexible in terms of like if i had something to do for my mother or if you know any any appointments things like that that was great i think the biggest impact it had on my career is that i did stay in atlanta um to take care of her i'm almost positive if i didn't if she was not here and taking care of her was not a part of my life that i probably would have moved That was the biggest thing. Now, do I regret it? No. It's fine. Because I don't think that, I mean, I've been able to accomplish many things by doing it. I mean, by staying here, it's not like I lost an opportunity or anything like that. But I certainly understand caregivers who feel frustrated. Because you do get frustrated with, you know, having so many demands on your time and things like that. So I think, but for me, you know, and once she died in the year, she died in the year, she died in the year, she died in the year, she died in the year, she did that. I didn't regret any of it. Like I didn't regret not having the wounds or anything like that. So I'm grateful now for people who are actively caregiving. My best advice is to balance and it's hard. And I'm hoping that, you know, I know everybody does not have a supportive employer. So, but it is, but you have to still find balance between, you know, work, and taking care of the person that you love. And then also find ways to develop yourself professionally where you are. So if you can't move, you know, what else can you do? Maybe you can get a certificate or, you know, some way to still bill you because you won't be caregiving your entire life. So therefore you need to, you know, still maintain yourself or find some way to, you know, skills. And that can be challenging too, depending on your, you know, the demands of your caregiving situation, but caregivers should also have respite periods. So find some way to incorporate that into that so you could still feel like you're accomplishing that's a big thing you don't want to feel like your your life can't stop just because you're caring right no absolutely that is that's such an important i that should honestly be the title of this podcast your life shouldn't stop because you're caregiving because there is an after and unfortunately and as heartbreaking as it is you're going to be, it's just you in the after, you know? And so that's, that's something that's really difficult to grapple with because it's the grief of losing someone, but also like even grieving for what your life was beforehand as well. And that's, that's something that people will feel guilty about, but it's a completely natural part of the human experience, at least from what I've seen in my opinion. Yeah. And also for me, my mother always wanted me to, to you know continue on and go on you know afterwards you know after she wasn't you know if she wasn't here and that motivated me a lot um to want to you know do stuff but that's a real thing for people to drop off from having care for someone for a long time and figuring out what to do next is you know a huge part of you know grieving and all you know that piece of it but you know being um having, allowing yourself to think about things you always wanted to do or, you know, hopefully you have a relationship with the person that you're caring for, that they're going to want you to, the best for you, want you to go forward and use that to kind of get yourself out the house, you know, go volunteer or go do something you hadn't been able to do. Having some kind of goals, and that ties back into the career thing, you know, keep some goals for yourself. the whole time so that when you're not when that period stops you can at least have something to focus on rather than just your you know bereavement and you know great period so speaking up i do want to give a quick shout out to miss felicia because she was feeling a little bit under the weather today but she's still on the show and is putting on an amazing you know giving amazing answers and just being yourself so i do I want to thank you for taking the time to be here, even though, um, maybe your throat will be so happy about it afterwards. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. My, my sinuses turned on me this weekend, so that's okay. We're going to get it handled on the air though, because I think when the seasons change or something like that's when so many people get sick, it makes sense. Um, but yeah. So speaking of like support and support systems, so I know you work in higher education. And you probably thought about this question quite often. But if you had sixty seconds to convince a university president to invest in student caregiver support, what would you say if you could add in some practical steps with minimal resources that would kind of help ease that burden that is currently there on student caregivers? Well, I find and there's actually there are some colleges I did a presentation with a colleague last year, a professional organization for student affairs, and we looked at some schools that have some caregiver programs going. Speaking of coughing, here comes one now. But I think whether it's higher education or you know, the workplace. I think where people connect to caregiving is if they know someone who's been a caregiver or they've been a caregiver themselves. And of course, since the number of caregivers in the country is increasing, that's becoming more, you know, that's becoming more common. So I think, you know, introducing that and then tying that to student success and student performance because we're college students or even youth because you know we're talking about college students here but they're they're youth caregivers they're you know people in high school there are people in elementary school who are caring and helping care for a parent you know they've got some responsibility you know they go to school but they come home and they have to sit with mom or help with dad's medication you know whatever it is and um they you know caregiving is affects class attendance, affects, you know, ability to get, you know, assignments done. In addition to the health of, you know, the students who are carrying, you know, their mental and emotional and, you know, physical well-being. So tying that to student success, because colleges are very, of course, the whole purpose of college is to get people to graduate, get degrees. The the caregiver experience and there's other students that there are other things that students face, like, you know, food insecurity impacts it. You know, homeless students, you know, we have students who are homeless, but, you know, trying to attend classes, showing them the connection between all of those things and student and how it affects student graduation rates and outcomes. is the key to that. And there are things that, you know, colleges can do. And it's interesting. I just had a conversation last week in a meeting about, you know, things that can be done. One easy thing is an intake survey. Every time a student enters and have a question on it that relates, are you, you know, helping take somebody to the doctor? Because oftentimes, sometimes if you use the word caregiver, they won't necessarily connect with that. Are you helping somebody you know, who has a health issue, you know, would be, you know, good, which is the easy way to identify it. And then a thing that doesn't require really any resources would be a peer support group because for college age students, you know, peer on peer, they, we use peer on peer, you know, support for lots of things. absolutely you know so that's an that's something that doesn't really cost any money you just have to get it organized and that would help the students to feel supported in their journey um by having somebody who could relate to what they're going through yeah and awareness that's the other thing making understand helping faculty and staff on campus to be aware that you know student caregivers exist and this is what happens and this is what they're going through so if somebody comes into their office and discloses um that they're they're caregiving you know their caregivers for somebody will be able to you know give support to them in that journey and you know whatever it is because it's all kinds of stuff i mean students are having to work to help people pay for medications it's all kinds of things so yeah i mean said so many so many great things there in that little bit but it's you know I feel like once a caregiver, always a caregiver, sort of like you kind of develop the heart for it. And then that's, it becomes a part of you because it's such a huge part of someone's life when you are like a family caregiver. And there's also stigmas that are involved with it as well. And until we as a society don't work hard to remove these stigmas and, you know, kind of like begin to accept and understand this is like a, you know, a natural part of life. And as a thing that is not nearly supported enough which is why there are probably like roadblocks and things like that in place. But to me, the thing that's, you know, like support groups, you know, you mentioned support groups and that's something that is so, so important because caregiving is such a lonely world. Like there, a lot of the times caregivers will feel isolated from the regular, like their regular life and social groups that they were with. And, um, you know, it can feel it's really isolating and like loneliness is a huge epidemic that's going on across the country right now too. So we don't need to be further contributing to that. And there are such amazing community resources in place. I know that there will be a caregiver support group in every single community. You just, like you said, you just have to go look for it and sort of find it and, you know, get connected with the people that are going through similar experiences as you, because that is therapy. Like that is something that will, you know, only contribute to you and your caregiving journey positively and so i think that that's that's really cool um aspect of like community building and then on one last thing you mentioned that you know the population is aging really really fast which means that we're only going to need actually i've like been doing research on some like numbers and statistics and This fact has just kind of been sitting with me, and that's that right now, the ratio of middle-aged individuals to older adults in the United States is seven to one. By twenty thirty, that ratio is going to be cut in half and be three to one. So that means that there's going to be even more family caregivers, which makes it even more important to have those supports in place now before it becomes an actual problem. Absolutely. Absolutely. And another point I wanted to add about youth and young adult caregivers, they're still in the process of developing emotionally and mentally, and that is a serious, has a serious impact on their ability to do that because, you know, when they're caring, or it can, because, you know, they're, and you mentioned about, their peers or feeling differently or, you know, wanting, not understanding, you know, thinking that, you know, their age group, their, you know, friends aren't doing this. They feel separate and they feel, you know, left out or they feel strange because they're not into it. So, you know, having, you know, people to relate to that, get peer, you know, support groups going, that gives another place for them to relate to that and help with their development. So, yeah. Totally. I completely could not agree with that. And, you know, again, like development and like, you know, using these things to kind of, you know, maybe life experiences and soft skills, quote unquote, as you were mentioning before, kind of like continue to upskill yourself. How can we as a society just reframe caregiving so it's seen as leadership experience and other, you know, rather than just like a barrier or like a resume gap, quote unquote? Well, I mean, you're managing things when you're a caregiver. You're leading things. You know, if you have to, if your loved one has multiple doctors, if they have, you know, home health aides coming in, if you're, you know, managing their finances, those are all leadership. You're leading, you're basically projects. you know managing so you're those put those skills down case managing um you know you know coordinating services all those things are stuff that you can put on your resume and i'm a big advocate of you know if you were caring for somebody or even if you were you know a parent whatever don't leave that as a gap on your resume put the skills down that you've utilized you know, that you utilize in that so that you can, you know, and show how that you could be effective in the workplace, you know, doing the same thing. You know, so that's how I mean, even when you're, you know, you're a student, whether you're, you know, you know, working, you know, not a student, you can. Utilize the skills that you get in as a caregiver in the workplace. yeah so yeah definitely i couldn't have said it better myself it's you know it's true true like experience and leadership and seventy five other things that you could list off and you know use those action verbs put it on your resume and make a whole little section about it because why the heck not right exactly yeah absolutely so You know, social workers, I like to believe, are sort of the unsung heroes of our healthcare system, as well as a lot of the times they're kind of described as like a bridge in our healthcare system too. So what are some things that healthcare teams, like you were mentioning before, can learn from the social work practice? And, you know, like, I mean, I guess social workers are a lot of times part of healthcare teams, but yeah. I would say the biggest... To me, the biggest thing that social work encompasses a lot of different things and has a code of ethics that guides the profession. But I feel like one of the biggest things that social work brings to anything, whether it's health care or anything, is advocacy. And a lot of times in health care, you don't have patient advocacy. a lot. You can't rely on necessarily the practitioners to be in that role. And there's so many different components of it. Again, we go back to insurance and all these different things. Social workers will bring the advocacy piece to any team to make sure that the patient's wishes are heard and understand. And people are advocating for their family members. Because a lot of times, unfortunately, I would love it if it would get better, but Caregivers are always included in healthcare decisions. Doctors and other professionals don't always feel the need to include them in that. So workers can ensure that that happens as well. And then of course the other piece is the social justice and equity piece where they're assuring that everybody has access to what they need, or at least they can, you know, push for them to have access. You know, social work can go into the policy space of, you know, on that side, trying to ensure that policies are fair and equitable and resources are fair and equitable. So that's the biggest thing that social work brings to that, you know, And I'm really glad that you mentioned that because I know you do a lot of advocacy work and caregiver equity and just equity in general when it comes to these things. So I'm going to jump a little bit ahead here because we've mentioned it, but you kind of just went into this of how caregiving does intersect with equity. You know, who's getting left behind and what can we what can our systems that we have in place do and what new systems can we put in place to kind of close these gaps? Like, what can we start doing to really make sure that this is not like an equity issue anymore? I think it's because it's so tied to health care. I think we have to deal with the inequity in health care in order to deal with the inequities that are in caregivers. A simple one is rural communities versus big cities. For a lot of people, Georgia is Atlanta, but there are plenty of rural communities that don't have health care, hospitals and doctors or specialists, and that's something that definitely needs to be addressed. approved in order to be able to address the needs of caregivers. Because if you have to drive, and I've heard of cases where this happens, depends on what your need, you may have to drive an hour, hour and a half away to get a memory assessment. That's not acceptable. Sometimes you can't. Right, exactly. There's tons of rules why that's not acceptable in terms of just a caregiver journey. I mean, the time it takes to do it. Excuse me. Take a sip of water. Like I said to you guys, trooper over here. Thank you. The time it takes to get the assessment, the time it takes out of them being able to do other things, all of that. Yeah, it's important. you know, plays into that, factors in. No, you're all good. What we can go ahead and do is there's a couple of questions in the audience as well. What I might do is I'll pick one of those that we'll go ahead and answer, and then maybe I can email them over to you if you have a few minutes, like, type them back out and we can respond to them in the comments sure we're excited to hear what you're saying and i'm gonna last question from myself and then we'll do one more audience question and we'll arrest that voice of yours um thank you of course of course so i think the one that i want to go ahead and do it because i know you know me as you um um dozens of thousands of, you know, student caregivers nationwide who are in a different they're taking on a new definition of student caregiver, you know, you know, becoming that respite for by also gaining some valuable experience that would otherwise be difficult to learn in a classroom. Companionship care services to older adults in their communities and also upskilling themselves as future clinicians and healthcare workers. So yeah, so students at Keriaya are often going to be nurses, doctors, and social workers, just like yourself. So maybe what are some tips that they could start using that and what can we do to ensure that they're not just prepared clinically, but also emotionally for the journey that lies ahead? I think that's one good thing about Keriaya because it gives them exposure to being at someone's bedside because you can't know what that's like until you do it. So for people who aren't a part of Cary Aulia, volunteering in places where you think where you want to work would be good because there's nothing like, and we see this, you know, I'm in a health college, so, but we see students who are really passionate or think they're really passionate about, being, you know, whatever it is, respiratory therapist, whatever. But then they go to the bedside and it becomes a challenge. And because there's so many things you have to be, you know, remove yourself or be selfless in the process. Absolutely. It takes practice, you know, to get that skill. So, yeah, it really does. And that's why I think You know, it all kind of comes full circle because you mentioned soft skills at the very beginning of this. And I think that that's something we don't do nearly enough in higher education or just gen ed in general. Right. Upskilling people in because that's skills are things that can also be taught. And we could use classroom spaces to teach things as well. I mean, of course, you're going to learn it through practical life experience, but. we could do a better job as a whole of kind of incorporating it more into like a holistic curriculum and find people to come out as like, you know, like a more like well-rounded professional in general, whether they're gonna be, you know, a healthcare administrator, a social worker, a doctor, or even like a, I don't even know, like a computer scientist. Like, I feel like those things will always come in handy, but we need to, a question here that asks, I was wondering what you think would have surprised your younger self the most about the work that you're doing now? I like that question. Give me a second. No, take your time. Off the cuff here. I know. Let me see. I think we'll see my younger self was set on thought i wanted to be a therapist and once i got exposure to it i didn't want to be a therapist every day i did not want to do that so i think the fact that i was able to that's one of the things i love about social work is that it gives you there's so much flexibility about where you social workers work in all different kind of settings yes um like they were because one of the big ones now that i find so interesting is spoke sports social work like they're in social workers working with NFL teams now to counsel their, yeah, it's a new thing. The social responsibility in corporate America, there's so many different spaces. So that's one of the things, that's one reason why I'm glad I chose this profession. what my younger self would have been surprised that this is what I ended up doing period. Because my younger self, I literally got a certification in school social work to work in a school system. And then before I even finished my practicum, I decided I knew I didn't want to do it. You were like, nope, not doing this. No, I'm not. The truancy thing was not my thing. So I just didn't, I didn't do it. So I think, and Maggie, thank you for that question too. Um, think that's what i would be surprised that i i learned because i thought i wouldn't be doing anything like this right that's that's so interesting too and like i mean there's um like just like you said social workers like when generally when people think social work they're like oh you know like child protective services like that maybe like five percent of social workers um but there's just it's so expansive um and something that is a super versatile field and there's a million and one things that you can do. And what you're doing is really unique as well, because that's not something that's, you know, I mean, I guess like, uh, student caregivers aren't even talked about nearly enough. So that's why the work that you're doing is so important and advocacy. Um, but yeah. Do you feel like you can do one more question or how are we thinking? Right now, we seem to be calm with this conference. Let's do another one. We can keep it quick. I like this one too. We have a question about, given the growing shortage of healthcare workers, how can we as a society work to make it easier for young people to pursue health professionals? This is an age-old question that we've been trying to figure out here at Cary. That's a good question. I think there's so many barriers that are in place, especially when it comes to like the cost of education. Because a lot of the times people who, there's so many people that will go into college wanting to pursue a career in healthcare, like a freshman who's pre-med. And most freshmen who are pre-med actually end up pursuing a completely different career path. And we have to, as a society, kind of think like, what is it that we're doing that's like kind of taking the dreams of these people away? And like, What can we do to kind of give these dreams back to them, you know? Yeah, I think definitely just in general, the cost of health care and the cost of education, period. And the thing about health care education, let's get out of my college period. Think about going to medical school. I mean, it's expensive. So, you know, it is and they get so we've got to create more more ways to find ways to make that more equitable, more, you know, scholarships or, you know, programs where the students can like, you know, there has to be some way to make it more accessible for people and cheaper. But here's the other side from that, from the education side is wanting healthcare programs is expensive. cheap like i mean some of the you know it's extreme like lab space and you know the accreditations that we have it's not cheap so there's it's it's different it's gonna take looking at different ways to make it less expensive on the schools um and and more and and there's not an easy answer for that easy either you know i'm like you know sometimes it's the profession that might have to advocate for more resources to, you know, or more scholarships or more, you know, assistantships or things, you know, depending on what level of education you're talking about in order to help pay for it. But I mean, and in fact, it's probably is a bigger conversation for the individual profession. Right. How they can make it because it's not, you know, like I said, to the school's point, it's not cheap. Like, I mean, we thought about starting some programs, some new programs that have to be accredited in order for the people to get licensure. And there are thousands of dollars to get off the ground. I mean, the number of resources. And that's one of the problems where you see it like, you know, schools, if you don't have access to your own medical center, which most of them don't or a hospital, you don't have enough clinical sites and where are you going to get them from? And I mean, it's a lot of consideration. So I think it's something that the professions may need to look at. Yeah. To look at different ways to get more people in there because the schools just aren't going to have the resources to necessarily do that by themselves. that's the thing, like really investing. That's something that I feel like we sometimes miss out on is like investing in something for the long-term return, because, you know, maybe, I don't know, I'm just like thinking random things right now, but what if there was like a program where, you know, people from pre-med people from underprivileged backgrounds who would not be able to like pursue a career in healthcare otherwise are part of the scholarship program where once they become a physician, their education has fully been paid for, they're expected to at some point in their life to kind of return the favor to another pre-med student down the road, kind of like support their education in becoming like a physician or something like that. Like that, like community-based things like that, I think would really be helpful in bringing these things together. And I do think that, you know, we can't ask more of our government. Like we can't ask government to kind of like do more in like subsidizing these things because it's, you know, there's... at the end of the day, like we're going to be in trouble if we don't have enough, like geriatricians. We don't have enough geriatricians. We don't have enough. We don't. We don't. We've got to get down to the geriatrician point. We're going to have to get young people interested in that branch of medicine because they don't want, we partner with Gray Health System on a project for one of their teen programs. And when they come to Grady, and if they're interested in pre-med, all of them want to be anesthesiologists because it pays the most. So getting them to be interested in something that's not just financially driven about how much money they're going to make is key too. Yeah, that's such a good point. I mean, it's about exposure too, though, because I didn't even know that geriatrics was like a field. I just was like, oh, it's family medicine, you know? but like that exists is really cool because like, and also allowing more exposure in medical school, like there should be a geriatric rotation. That's just like, you know, a four week thing they shove in there every once in a while because someone is telling them that they have to, but it's like something that should be like more of like a conversation because again, our population is aging faster than we can handle. And, We got to do something about it. Um, also helping young people to understand older, like age, you know, aging, you know, you know, they've got to, you know, helping them to see people who are older than they are, um, are not, are, are have value. Cause I think that's part of it is they don't want to do it because they, I mean, people like five, like ten years older than them are old. to them, but helping them that, you know, aging is a process that we all have to go through and you're going to continue to have value until you're not here anymore. And I think that's part of it because they don't want to, that's part of the, they don't want to treat old people. You know what I'm saying? Because we don't talk about it nearly enough because aging is scary. Aging is this big, bad thing that you don't, you don't want to do, but no, aging is beautiful. Aging is a privilege. If you don't age, then you die young and no one wants to die young. So it's as like our media and our society can do a better job of portraying aging as a natural part of life that you should be excited for. I'm telling myself this too. Well, everybody does. Cause as you get older, you're like, Oh Lord, you know, you have to tell you have to, but it's again, the images we see, you know, the messages we get, you know, it's a blessing. There's plenty of people who didn't don't get old. Cause they don't make it to, you know, like dirty or, or whatever the age is, much less, you know, our senior community, they don't get that far. So if you make it that far, then that's a blessing as opposed to, you know, looking at it like, oh my goodness, I'm getting older. Thank goodness you're getting older because a lot of people didn't get a chance to do that. So yeah. A hundred percent. Absolutely. Well, Ms. Felicia, I can talk to you for another two and a half hours, but I know that your throat would not like that. It would probably, I would love to be able to talk more. I'm so grateful for the opportunity and been on the podcast. Please. Oh my gosh. It's you're, you're perfect just the way you are. And what, you know, maybe we can, Make a promise that one day we'll continue the conversation. And a few months down the road, we'll have a part two of the podcast and keep talking. Absolutely. I would love that. Absolutely. I would love that. I have fantastic time with you. There's so many cans of worms that we still got to open. But again, thank you for being here. And thank you, everyone, for the questions. And we will see you again very, very soon. See you later. Thank you. Bye-bye.