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Good morning and welcome to another edition of The Black Voice. I'm your host Ruben Sherman. The Harris County Hospital District is taking a unique approach in meeting medical as well as psychosocial issues facing health care professionals on this friday october 7th. The Harris County Hospital District

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will present the third annual conference on HIV AIDS Impact on Healthcare. The theme of this year's conference is addressing the difficult issues and strengthening foundations on the front line. Here to tell us more about the conference is MS Marlene Jones, she's manager of social services for

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the thomas street Clinic. Thank you for being here. Thank you for inviting. The conference is really going to deal with a large variety of of of of issues certainly some that relate to patients as well as the friends and family members of those infected with the

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virus. Let me start by asking you to tell us about the the heart of the conference itself. Okay, as you stated, the theme of the conference is addressing the difficult issues strengthening the foundations. Um the conference this year, the will be dedicated to the memory of

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Stephen Bradley and activists for the city as well as the founder and chairperson for the thomas Street Clinic patient advisory council. Um The the theme this year, keeping in line with its keeping in line with the theme of the conference, we will address such issues as

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pain management and conflict care. Um The another issue that will be discussed will be the patient's right to self determination. Um and there will also be a panel of patients who will discuss long term surviving along with HIV as well as some psycho social issues that

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go along with having HIV disease? Yeah, let me get you to go back and tell us about pain management and and as well as the self determination issue, pain management patients sometimes have very difficult. Pain pain is associated with a lot of the opportunistic infections that

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the patients get. So, being able to manage the pain and even being able to manage the pain at home. It's a much better way for the patient. It keeps them with their loved ones and it makes the environment and this their life more gratifying. And when

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we talk about self determination, what are we talking about? Well, in self determination, the patient has the right to determine when they feel like they've had enough, when they think they've been on enough treatment modalities that they feel are not working to the very best and

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the patient then makes that decision to go into hospice and the patients should have the right to make that decision. It should not be something that should be forced upon them by any health care professional. The general public is invited to the general public is invited.

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We also encourage doctors, nurses, social workers, and other health care professions in the HIV arena to attend this conference, we were talking just before we got started about the impact and certainly the pressure's on friends as well as family members of those who are infected with

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the HIV virus or who do have AIDS. Um what kinds of things uh will the conference uh due to to inform them on how to deal with with those various pressures? Well, the conference will have very knowledgeable um educators in the field of HIV we have

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physicians, social workers, um psychotherapist as well as patients who will be there who have first hand knowledge about these issues and areas that they can give to the attendees at the conference. This information that they may be seeking to help them with their own it may

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it be personal or or even in their community to take back to their community. Yeah, we're almost out of time but I mentioned a term that I'm not familiar with in the open and that was psychosocial for those in our audience as well as myself who

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may not be familiar with what that's that term is about. Sure. That that with us, if you can psychosocial is just over the overall well the health well being of the patient, the whole person, the whole person. When we take care of the psychosocial issues, we

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take care of the mental as well as the physical as well as the financial, the social we take care of the whole the whole psycho social life and you cannot have you cannot have one that's missing because that does not make that person a complete person.

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Yeah, yeah. Good conference if those of you at home would like to attend or certainly gain more information about the conference, you may call the number that you see there at the bottom of your screen. It's going to take place again. The conference on october 7th

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from 7:30 a.m. To 3 30 PM. Shared an Astrodome. And again the number there on your screen. 7938725. You can call that number. For more information, Miss jones. Thanks for being here. Well stay tuned because up next we're gonna talk about breast cancer survivors after these

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messages stay with.