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However we define health, we all agree that life without it is a bummer. Staying well involves two sorts of activities:

[1] those which help to prevent malfunction of the body in the first place and
[2] those that help the system begin to function properly again after a breakdown has occurred.

While rural folks may avoid many physical problems because of the good food they eat and the healthful exercise they get, they've always been at a real disadvantage when illness or accident does strike. Many small communities have no doctor, let alone hospital and residents of really isolated locations face severe transportation problems in reaching medical assistance. Here, it seems, is one more area of our lives where those pioneer principles of self sufficiency and mutual aid need to be applied.

A NEW DIRECTION IN HEALTH CARE

Our present health care system has been called "physician centered". Until recently, "going to the doctor" was the only way to get competent help for a physical problem you couldn't handle yourself. Since there aren't enough physicians to go around, however especially in rural areas-not everyone who needs treatment receives it.

While the matter of training more M.D.'s is debated endlessly, with little action, help has been arriving from other directions. The terms nurse practitioner and physician's assistant-which are unfamiliar to most of us-identify two new and growing sources of aid in health care.

Dave Raskin is a MOTHER reader, a ham (W5TYL), and a family nurse practitioner in the small mountain village of Penasco, near Taos and the old Hog Farm in north-central New Mexico. In a recent letter Dave ex

plained: "Nurse practitioners are registered nurses with anywhere from two to five years of basic educational preparation and usually several years of work experience. They then get extra training in medicine to the tune of about one year. Some go on to specialize, but most remain in primary care. In other words, the practitioner is the first source of medical services a patient sees when he seeks help. The N.P-.kind of like the old family doc-then either gives the care needed or refers the person to a specialist. The system employs protocols or algorithms as an outline to be followed in making a diagnosis and providing treatment or referral services.

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