Unlocking Clinician Fears of Working With Our Elders - with Jill Johnson Young

Unlocking Clinician Fears of Working With Our Elders – with Jill Johnson Young

As our population ages, health professionals will see more and more people coming into their clinics living with dementia and who are in desperate need of the support of health professionals. But how do we as health professionals support them and why are many health professionals reluctant to serve the older population? They are two questions explored in this wide-ranging conversation when Jo is joined by Jill Johnson Young.

Jill is the CEO of Central Counseling Services. She specialises in grief and loss, dementia, and end of life, and speaks internationally to therapists, allied health professionals, associations for grief, the funeral industry, and community groups. She has also written several books for children and adults on grief. Jill teaches grief and dementia to therapists, and current courses are on her site. Her most recent book is “The Rebellious Widow,” which weaves some of her story into the book you need to prepare for a coming death, the dying process, and recovery. You can find more about Jill at www.therebelliouswidow.com and www.jilljohnsonyoung.com

Resources mentioned in this episode:

If you know you need more support, please visit my website at https://jomuirhead.com

Transcript

Jo:

Welcome back to the Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast. And it is with much excitement that I am speaking with one of my favorite people, Jill Johnson Young today. Now, Jill and I have known each other since about 2015, and it’s now 2023. So somebody else out there can do that math <laugh>. But Jill was one of these wonderful people that when I first met her, my reaction was, I need more of Jill in my life. And fortunately, that has happened. But Jill, why don’t you tell us who you are, where you’re talking to us from, and how you impact the world?

Jill:

I will do that. But first, let me say, when I first met Jo, I knew I needed more Jo in my life. It was instant bond, and I’m so glad. And it happened in La Jolla, California, which is sort of a magical place. So I am a licensed clinical social worker, and I am in Southern California. I’m currently in Riverside. I practice in Riverside in a town called Murrieta, which is in wine country in SoCal. And it’s currently a hundred and some degrees outside Fahrenheit. And I loved impacting the world in terms of doing end of life better and helping people die better deaths, and helping with grief and helping clinicians do those things better. And making medical personnel talk about those topics instead of run from them. And talking about dementia in all the things and all the forms, and helping to recognise it. And I do it with help from my oodles who are all rescues and seniors and all the things. And I’m a double widow. And in addition to having a private practice called Central Counseling Services, I also have jilljohnsonyoung.com and I write books about grief and loss and dementia. And now there’s a new one because of my mom’s recent death. It’s gonna be all the stupid stuff people say <laugh>, because I’ve always kept a list. But now there’s gonna be a book.

Jo:

<Laugh>. I’m gonna hold you accountable to that book ’cause the world needs this book. So Jill, you’ve led a very fulfilled life and you’ve done a lot of amazing things. There was a recent conversation that we were a little bit a part of on social media. Can you tell us what you thought you wanted to do when you were, say, a teenager thinking about careers and how you ended up as a social worker? ’cause I laughed so loud when I heard this <laugh>

Jill:

<Laugh>. I wanted to be a veterinarian ’cause I’m a pet person. And then I arranged to spend some time with our veterinarian in the summer, and I witnessed a surgery or part of one ’cause then I ended up on the floor passed out, and then I realised I was not going to be a veterinarian ’cause passing out is not appropriate when you’re supposed to be doing surgery. And I knew I wanted them to perhaps be a florist. And then I realised that meant working holidays and weekends. And then I turned around while I was in college and said, history’s gonna change the world in some ways, but I need to do something different. There are problems that need solving. And I left the PhD program in history. I had started and went to work for our local AIDS project, and then a social worker was born

Jo:

<Laugh>. Yeah. And you are so committed to social justice. It’s like, if I need a bit of a wakeup call, it’s like, okay, what’s Jill’s opinion on this? And that doesn’t mean I agree with everything that Jill says. Don’t get us wrong. We’re allowed to have disagreements, right? Yes,

Jill:

We are.

Jo:

But Jill is one of those people that helps me think about things from a different perspective ’cause you know, I’m a white middle class, middle aged woman who’s had quite a lot of opportunities in her life. So sometimes I need help to think about other things. So, for those of you listening to this podcast, I just wanna be really clear with you, today we are gonna be talking about death. We’re gonna be talking about dying. We’re gonna be talking about dementia. We’re gonna be talking about growing older. So for some of you listening, this might be uncomfortable. It might be difficult, and it might be triggering. And if that’s you, you have full permission to hit stop, go make yourself a lovely warm beverage and know that this may not be for you today. So we say that with all care and compassion, I mean, we want everybody to listen to this, but we also understand that for some people now is not the right time. Okay. So there we go. There’s my disclaimer. Excellent. So, Jill, I’m just gonna jump straight in. So, as somebody who coaches health professionals in private practice, I am stunned that I have to almost beg people to work with an ageing population because I’ve done the maths, I’ve done the sums, I’ve read the stats. And we have a niche. We have a whole population of people with income or with capacity to pay that are so underserviced

Jill:

One third of the population and growing as a matter of fact. More than that now.

Jo:

<Affirmative>. So, I found stats because there will be some people listening who wanna know stats. So for those of you who don’t know approximately, because you know who counts this stuff in the United States, you have a population of 332 million people.

Jill:

Yeah. We’re a little crowded compared to Australians.

Jo:

We have 26 million. This is why Australia’s population is less than the population of California, not the point. 332 million people, of which people over the age of 65 make up about 4 million. That’s a lot of people. And then in 2019, ’cause I found this report, which we’ll put in the show notes. It’s called the 2020 Profile of Older Americans. That must have been a fun thing to throw around in a meeting in 2019, 13% of people aged 65 and older reported taking prescription medications. 13%! We’re not talking small numbers here.

Jill:

And more should have been <laugh>.

Jo:

Yeah. But they reported taking prescription medicine for feelings of worry, nervousness, or anxiety. And 12% reported taking prescription medicine for depression. These numbers are only gonna grow because we know the population’s growing.

Jill:

Right. And because we’re also here in the US requiring physicians to ask people about anxiety and depression now. So those numbers are gonna skyrocket.

Jo:

Wow. So, Jill, do you have any insight into why it is? Cause we’ve got the symposium coming up, right? I’ve got one spot to fill on the panel that you are running. I want a non-mental health professional. So I’m looking for a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech and language pathologist to sit on that panel and talk about working with old people. I can’t find them. The gentleman from Holland that I reached out to, he wants to do it, but he needs to do it in Dutch. That ain’t gonna work for me.

Jill:

Not gonna work. <Laugh>.

Jo:

So, Jill, what is it that is so difficult about working with this population?

Jill:

There are so many layers to that <laugh>. Partly it’s because when you’re looking at someone who’s older, you’re looking yourself in the face in whatever number of years. And I’m turning 60 next year. My girlfriend’s group and I are all going together on a vacation to celebrate turning 60 fully. Three quarters of them will not put a t-shirt on that says I’m 60. So talk about denial. We don’t wanna see older. It involves seeing our parents if they’re still alive and what we might be facing with them. Here in the States, it involves dealing with Medicare much of the time. And Medicare is problematic and difficult to get on the panel. And their rates vary wildly. And it’s just a challenge to be part of. And partly people just don’t value older peopleFolks just don’t see the treasures that they are, which just astounds me. ’cause my background in hospice, I got to meet the most amazing people. I met a woman who was walking her husband to work at Pearl Harbour when the bomb started falling. And she gotta describe it to me. And I met two men who had frostbites still from being on the front lines in Korea. And we did PTSD work while they were in hospice care. Because MASH came on, and here it goes again. There is so much richness in the older population, but the older population is slower. You have to take time to listen to them. You may be dealing with dementia, and so it may be frustrating because you have circular conversations and that irritates a good number of people. I do a lot of education with that. And I also think it’s scary. It’s, don’t wanna be old, so I don’t wanna work with old, and yet we’re all gonna be there. There’s no way out of this world if you don’t get to old. That means you get to die young. And so neither one is, that’s not a good solution.

Jo:

No. <laugh>. It’s definitely not a good solution. And we’ve got this, the confrontation around working with older people. I guess I hadn’t really thought of that, but it brings me back to in the olden days, I was a Diversional therapist, which has a whole new name now, which is basically how I was working in a nursing home here in Australia. So an age care facility for, and helping people with activities during the day. And I must admit back when I was a baby health professional doing this work, it was confronting. It was really confronting. And some of the things I used to do was I play the piano a lot ’cause they seemed to really enjoy that. And I started finding children’s books that had naughty themes in them. <Laugh>. So they laughed.

Jill:

Bathroom jokes. It’s the thing. Yep,

Jo:

Yep, there’s lots of children’s books around poop that people thought were hilarious. So back in those days, if I reflect on that, I didn’t feel like I was contributing at all. I just felt like I was babysitting old people. And I’m being very open about that there. And I know that’s an awful, awful judgement. But if I was to come to you and say, Jill, I can’t do this job anymore. It’s just babysitting old people. How would you like to respond to that? Not slapping me in the face.

Jill:

<Laugh>. I don’t generally slap, I generally laugh.

And I would say, I think probably you’re giving them the best quality of life they’ve had in a long time. If you’re sitting and playing the piano and telling them jokes and doing things with them that are on their level, that gives them a quality of life and a meaning in life that matters more than anything. It really does. I just lost my mom in June and she had two forms of dementia. She was a handful at times. She truly was. But one of the things she loved was still playing the piano. She still remembered all the music. She couldn’t remember words sometimes. She remembered all the music. And she loved telling stories. And if she could find somebody to sit and listen to her stories, even if they went round and round and round, it gave her such a lift. And that’s what we can do with these folks. We can write their stories down and make a book out of it and give it to their family. What a gift. You’re now leaving for the family in addition to helping the senior who’s living in a facility. It’s amazing what you can do.

Jo:

And I remember this with one grandmother and my great aunt in particular. I still have this absolutely gorgeous memory of where I sat them down together ’cause they were sisters. So they were very close. They spoke to each other every day. And I said, tell me what it was like for you being a little girl. And I could not write fast enough. Could not. And now I’ve kept some of those stories and I wanna be able to pass them down to the people that come through after me in my family. But Jill, my question is, for most of us that doesn’t feel therapeutic?

Jill:

I don’t understand that.

Jo:

Okay. Well, how so? Because I’m sitting there going, I’m just being nice to old people. So this is Jo just throwing out words. Now, how do we get around the fact that therapy, whether it’s physical therapy or occupational therapy I mean, guess they’re a little bit easier. It’s like, dude, you need to be able to walk to the bathroom or love, we need to be able to get your hand to your mouth to put food in your mouth. But for those of us who tend to work more bios, psychosocially, how does writing stories down equate to something therapeutic? Help us understand that

Jill:

It reduces depression. If you’re looking at the lifespan at the end of life, we have a search for meaning and a need to leave behind a legacy. That’s our last bit.

Jo:

Actually have another existential crisis looming?

Jill:

We do. Am I gonna be remembered? Who’s gonna remember me? What am I gonna be remembered for? And my mom will be remembered for her stories and for road trips. And I’m gonna be remembered for dressing my oodles up in clothing and dragging them to the office and refusing to have a dirty kitchen. Like it’s who we are. And when you are living in a nursing home and all people know you as is, you know, Mary, who wears the same dress every day, instead of Mary, who used to whatever Mary did, right? My little lady who saw Pearl Harbour was bed bound, but she finally told me she loved roses. And I went out and bought a rose bush. We moved her bed so she could see out the window. We put the rose bush right there. And her back hurt. I got her a new pillow that was therapeutic. And then she opened up and talked because she no longer hated me ’cause she was known as the woman who threw things at people. <Laugh>.

Jo:

So here we go. So we, as health professionals, we tend to go and work with people. And regardless of how much we are thinking that I’m gonna meet the person where they’re at. I’m going to do the things that they need done. And we wanna be as client centred as we can be. But we do need to remember that we’ve been doing this for quite a while and we have our processes, we have our ways of assessing. We’re always looking for risk management. So not understand it’s an easy thing to go. Someone else can find the pillow. The pillow isn’t gonna resolve this woman’s depression. But it did, the pillow started her feeling safe to have a conversation. So this brings up a whole new conversation, Jill, which isn’t on my list of questions.

Jill:

<Laugh>, surprise.

Jo:

<Laugh>. How do we then start to develop rapport for people who have circular conversations or on Monday are incredibly lucid and taking over the world and Tuesday can’t get outta bed? Like how do we meet people where they’re at when they’re at when we just dunno what we’re turning up to?

Jill:

And that’s why people also get confronted when they’re working with this population. Which doesn’t always have to be seniors by the way. Because the fastest growing population of dementia is those under 65, right? Great Britain just had their youngest one. She was 14. So we’ve got dementia younger. But what we need to do is be able to meet them on each day where they are not locked into some silly treatment plan. And yes, I said that folks, silly treatment plan because the treatment plan needs to be centred around that person and giving them a sense of wellbeing. A sense of wholeness, and working on the generativity versus relativity pieces, right? It’s all grad school therapy coming right back at you

Jo:

<Laugh>. There we go!

Jill:

So if they’re psychotic and they can’t remember, draw with them. They can still hold a crayon. Show them pictures of funny videos on your phone. Find out from somebody what music they listen to when they do listen to music and pull up YouTube. You will find that you are providing therapy.

Jo:

Yes. We are. So we’ve talked about getting into nursing homes or working with people in nursing homes, both Australia, the United Kingdom and the US we have this incredible issue. Oh, and Japan. We need to help people stay at home as long as possible. We just don’t have enough space. We don’t have enough care. We don’t have enough nurses, we don’t have enough facilities. So there’s a push in all of these countries, all of these developed countries, to have people living out their lives in their home. Now, what sorts of things change when you have to go into a person’s home?

Jill:

You get the opportunity to find out who they were. I love going into the home. My hospice days. I could walk in and figure out to some degree who this person was. And if it’s a couple that’s still living together or they’ve got who this family is. I can see that they had this many children. I can see that they’re pet people or not pet people, right? I can see that she’s the one who collected the dolls or she’s the one who loved the great outdoors. I instantly have a focus, a conversation to break the ice. It’s delightful. I love being in the home. If someone wants a cup of tea, I can put one on. That’s the best place in the world to be. And then I can work with them on, first of all, safety. Yes. Okay. You’re staying home. I just walked over a rug. Would you mind if I helped you think about rolling that rug up and chucking it in the garage? Because that’s a trip hazard. And I know you love little scruffy, but Scruffy’s bowl needs to not be in the footpath. And I can bond with them in terms of, I’m very concerned about your safety ’cause I want you to stay home. I don’t want you to trip and fall, break your hip and die in the hospital. Which is really what I mean, raise your hand if that’s not a fear. Because we all know what happens when you break a hip.

Jo:

Yeah.

Jill:

Yeah. So it’s that kind of thing. You have more opportunity to work with someone on more levels in a home than any place else. And you can work with the family on anticipatory grief. And if they’re willing to, to work with the family and the patient and do it together, which is the most powerful work any therapist will ever do in their entire lifetime. And I am completely biased in that, but it’s true.

Jo:

Yeah. No, I think hopefully the people listening to this are starting to feel a little more confident and a little more like, oh, that would imagine making a difference like that. Especially when we can get into the family. I love going into people’s homes as a part of my work. And when they usually offer the tea or coffee first. And what I like to do is I turn that into an assessment. I go, great. Can we go do that together? Because now I’m a rehabilitation counsellor, so this is a part of my belly work. This is part of my skill set. But for me I’m looking at their processing. I’m looking at their being able to step out tasks. And it gives me so much information about physical capability, but also cognitive capability. And meanwhile, can they do it while we’re chatting?

Jill:

Great.

Jo:

Did they leave the gas on? That’s happened to me before. Now, not that I work with many older people anymore, but I have worked with quite a few people with cognitive impairment. So Jill, I wanna talk into this dementia piece because we help people return to work following injury, illness and trauma and Purple Co in my private practice. And we had a client of working age. She wasn’t 60 and we were helping her return to work. She’d come to us because her employer had said, she’s a problem. We don’t think she wants to be at work anymore. And we started looking into some of the behaviours. And in the rehab, we’ve started putting memory pumps in place. We started looking at how she was sequencing things. And the consultant and I were talking about it. And the consultant it’s almost like her brain is with cheese. And then we both went…

Jill:

Dementia.

Jo:

And that’s exactly what we found. Now that totally changed her relationship with her employer. And we were able to provide all sorts of support. Now she wasn’t able to remain in that job, but because we were able to get her accurately diagnosed, ’cause we knew what to look out for, we were then able to help her access her superannuation and all sorts of other money and then get that set up for her. So Jill, earlier you mentioned a 14 year old person in the United Kingdom being diagnosed with dementia. You and I both know that dementia is turning up into our private practices, our clinics, and we’re not even recognising it.

Jill:

It’s rarely recognized.

Jo:

Yeah. So what are we doing? Instead of going, haha could this be dementia? What are we saying instead of that?

Jill:

We’re saying about your lady that about a man I had who was referred by his employer and he worked in a prison and they were days from firing him. Now he was a state employee. He had a very significant retirement. Had he been fired, there would’ve been no retirement. I had him for about 35 minutes. I realised we had dementia on board. I called his wife, we called his employer. We got him into a neurologist, which was a small miracle. The employer backed off for a little bit and we medically retired him. Was it a win for him to stay at work? No. Was it a win that he didn’t die penniless? A hundred percent. And his wife got survivor’s benefits, which is hugely important. What we’re seeing is anxiety, depression. Malingering is my favourite term.

Jo:

Yes. That’s the one we get.

Jill:

Can we just stop that Please? People don’t malinger.

Jo:

Yeah. Or can we go, if you are going to put that label on somebody, instead of just going ‘you are malingering, that’s bad’. You can go, why? How does it serve you to malinger?

Jill:

Right. And has there been a change in the last three months, six months, year, two years? And can we ask the family if they’re seeing changes in sequencing, in remembering tasks and remembering dates. Can you buy ’em a new cell phone and see if they can figure out how to use it? Cause the definition of dementia is that you can’t learn new things. So if you give them new things to learn and they can’t learn, we’re done in terms of the diagnosis, that gives us the opportunity then to help the patient and the family prepare for what’s coming. Because with dementia you’ve got a lot of stuff to take care of. And the problem is, most people with dementia cover it. They know. They absolutely know it. They can remember that they’re not functioning and they manage to hide it in general for about two to two and a half years.

Jo:

Whoa. God, we’re clever people.

Jill:

They’re clever. And they make their doctor’s appointments short. Because they know they can manage about 30 minutes and then the doctor won’t do that mini mental status exam ’cause they’ve cut it to 30 minutes and so they can get in and out. And our healthcare system has completely accommodated that. ’cause now doctors get seven so they don’t notice the cognitive difficulties. Right. How are you doing? Oh, great.

Jo:

And I noticed, I know with my grandmother, she got very good at reciting what made us smile. So she would say words that she knew would bring about a smile, but I knew to check for understanding and meaning and it wasn’t there. And that’s part of how we started to work with this, this younger lady in this workplace is like stuff that was repetitive all the time. Like if somebody moves something out of order on her desk, she was a mess. But then the next day she could come in and she would completely rearrange her desk and be fine. So people thought that she was just being obstropolous. But those are features that there’s something else going on, right?

Jill:

You get different levels of ability on different days.

Jo:

Yes. So if you haven’t heard anything else today, please understand this is that we will see more and more people living with dementia coming into our clinics regardless of their age. It is a growing health concern

Jill:

And the most expensive one worldwide <laugh>. And it’s in your family too, by and large. I know it’s in my genetics. You know, if there’s no way around it. And we have to be able to talk about it because if we keep acting afraid of it. If we don’t educate ourselves, if our therapists and our other clinicians, if our medical providers here in the states, 50% of doctors won’t tell a dementia patient they have dementia.

Jo:

Oh, good lord.

Jill:

<Laugh>. It’s not fair. You need a power of attorney and a will and a living. You need all the things.

Jo:

Yeah. And, I can just imagine that conversation. Dear sir, you have dementia. Here’s a list of all the things you need. Bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. Whereas the clients back over there going, oh, look at the cat.

Jill:

Right. <laugh>. Yeah.

Jo:

So again, it comes back to our core strengths. The things that we do innately that we don’t even realise are therapeutic is our ability to meet a person where they’re at. The ability to kind of go, hey, you checked out there for a minute, let me help you reorient yourself back to the room.

Jill:

Right. And let me also redefine the client ’cause If you’ve got a client who’s developing dementia, your client has now become their family too. And they need to be brought in. You need to get all those releases signed and make them part of the process so you can help them process and help them work with this person to deal with the anxiety that comes with dementia. The depression that comes with dementia. We know they’re intertwined, inextricably intertwined. But we also need to make sure that we’ve got things getting in order. And there are not a lot of places that really sit down and talk with you about it. If you’re high functioning, you can download all the lists, but then you gotta do the list. And the list is a lot.

Jo:

I have enough trouble doing the list and I know I don’t have dementia. So stop giving me lists. People stop giving me forms to fill out for God. <Laugh?>

Jill:

That’s my life right now.

Jo:

<Laugh>. I know. Oh. And then I sent you forms, Jill. Sorry about that. <Laugh>. One of the things that I hear people react to, which I now understand, is they are covering up their discomfort about looking in the mirror is they go, there’s no money working with older people. Would you like to challenge that perception <laugh>? Like, I won’t get paid. Old people don’t have money. <Laugh>

Jill:

Older people do generally have money and older people who do not have money generally here in the states, have access to other funds and other forms of medical coverage. And the Veterans Administration has money and there are grants because governments around the world are realising we got a problem with dementia and we really need to start tapping into those and creating programs. Because right now, if we’re lucky, you’ve got a senior centre where someone can go, or adult daycare. Doesn’t that sound delightful? No. Who here wants to think that in their senior years, I’m gonna go to adult daycare. That doesn’t sound fun.

Jo:

Not unless we’re reading books about poop, right? <Laugh> Or maybe the fire brigade comes and we get to watch the photo shoot of their calendar or something like that. That’s that kind of daycare.

Jill:

Right. But we need to be able to look at all the different funds and figure out ways to do it. For our office, we opened a nonprofit. So if someone truly doesn’t have funds, we have students we can train to work with folks and they can still get care. There are ways around it, but we do need to provide the care. Because to say to someone, oh, you’ve got anxiety and out the door ’cause they’re not insured. Seriously? <laugh>.

Jo:

Yeah. can do better than that. And if we continue to, and if we continue to wait for governments to make enough space available and enough money available, nobody’s ever gonna get looked after. This is where private practice has a genuine place. But we actually need to be courageous enough to confront our own fears and concerns about getting older or having dementia. And then we need to skill ourselves. So Jill, how do we skill ourselves with this stuff? Can I go to university to learn how to be a carer for some, or a therapist for people with dementia?

Jill:

Well, you should take a class in how to be a caregiver. Or a carer, which I prefer that term. And here in States we have am Office on Aging in every single State. I know that they have carer classes in Australia and Great Britain. I’ve seen them. And I’m in touch with those folks. Because you need to know what these families are coping with. You can’t do care for someone as a therapist if you don’t understand what it means for someone to not sleep at night every night.

Jo:

Please don’t just tell them to get their sleep schedule working.

Jill:

It doesn’t work ’cause their brain no longer works, right? My second wife died of Lewy Body Dementia. And I remember one night, it was midnight, I was like, you know, it’s 12 o’clock, honey. She said, was it 12 o’clock day or night? It was pitch black outside. All of us would’ve known. But they don’t have the cues in their brains anymore. And we need to keep that in mind. But you can take the class and then you should take some training in dementia and you should read The 36 Hour Day because that is the bible and the gold standard of dementia everywhere. And you should volunteer a little bit if you can in an ageing home. And you could take a class from me if you choose to.

Jo:

Well, I was gonna say, can we talk about your classes? Because your classes are outstanding.

Jill:

Yeah. They are. I do Dementia 101 and I talk about it and I do a dementia and grief class because dementia is grief. And I’m also putting together a new dementia and intimacy class because that’s becoming a very big deal. So we need to talk about that stuff too, and not get all crazy about legal stuff.

Jo:

<Laugh>. Oh gosh. I’m not gonna bring that up. No, I’ll just leave that alone. So, I’ve asked you to be a part of this year’s Future Proofing Health Professional Symposium and you graciously said yes before you even knew what I was gonna ask you to do. But you are actually gonna be facilitating a panel so far it’s got two people. So if you know the third out there, listeners, get in touch with me and your discussion is going to be all around why we find it hard to work with older people and you’re gonna be speaking to people who actually choose to do this work.

Jill:

Excellent. I’m so excited. Because we want more people to do the work. We need them. It’s tiring to be the only one. And to get calls over and over again. But I can’t find anyone. I know you can’t. I know one therapist on the West coast who specialises in dementia and she’s in Seattle.

Jo:

Wow.

Jill:

Yeah.

Jo:

So Jill, the symposium is where we can learn more about you. We’ll have links to Jill’s books and her website and her training in the show notes because if you’ve heard anything here today and for future proofing us as health professionals is also making sure that we know the types of clients that are gonna be coming in our doors. The types of niches or people who are gonna need services. So for me it’s like a no-brainer. Like why aren’t more of us getting on this bandwagon? Why aren’t more of us going, woo a big part of the population needs help over here that aren’t getting serviced. How can I contribute to that? And it might be just being a referral source. You know, you don’t have to become the Jill Johnson Young of all things dementia. It’s just being aware and building those resources and building your own knowledge, which I think is really important. So I’m a bit passionate about this, but I am a bit confronted because I’m like, huh. There’s room in my private practice for us to be doing some work here. So, thank you Jill.

Jill:

There’s lots of room.

Jo:

Okay. So the most important question of the day is when we get to hang out together again, <laugh>.

Jill:

When?

Jo:

When and we get to go have coffee together. Yes. What coffee are you ordering?

Jill:

I’m a latte girl.

Jo:

Oh, thank God. <Laugh>. We know how to order a latte.

Jill:

But not one from the green thing. Yeah. Not that Green box place.

Jo:

No, no, no. Have we met? I don’t go to the Green place <laugh>.

Jill:

I know you don’t. And I don’t either. It tastes like something.

Jo:

The only place I go to the green place is at Honolulu Airport. Oh. Now this sounds pretentious because I get off that plane and I’m like, give me all the coffee now. <Laugh>

Jill:

<Laugh>. You know, the best latte I’ve ever had was at Shipple Airport in Amsterdam.

Jo:

Good to know. Right. Shipple Coffee in Amsterdam. Jill, thank you so very much.

Jill:

That’s it. At four in the morning, <laugh>.

Jo:

Oh wow! Thank you so much, Jill, for being on this episode today. And if you’ve got any questions for Jill, you can find her in the Future Proofing Health Professionals Facebook group. It’s a free group. I know. Free. You are welcome to come join us. If you’ve got a question for Jill, you just write it in there, tag her in it and she will be able to answer that for you ’cause Jill loves chatting in case you haven’t noticed this right now. <laugh>. So thank you so much, Jill. Thank you everybody who has listened today. Go forth and be your awesome self.