by Amy Baruch, MD, Emergency Medicine of Idaho

The childhood board game of Chutes and Ladders is marked by a series of squares, where the goal is to reach the hundredth square by rolling the dice and advancing your game piece. Land on a chute and you fall back, or a ladder, and you climb closer to the winning square. This Milton-Bradley classic is based on a game originating in India called Snakes and Ladders. Its historic roots were founded on a lesson in morality from traditional Hindu philosophy.

Abhilash Desai, MD, Idaho Memory and Aging Centers

Hello and welcome to COVID Meditation – COVID stands for Compassion, Optimism, Vitality and Defiance. COVID Meditation is a combination of four short mantra repetition meditations – each one is one minute long. This meditation will help you activate “the defiant power of the human spirit” (holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s phrase). Let’s remind ourselves that Compassion Optimism Vitality and Defiant attitude are even more contagious than COVID!

By Guillermo Guzman, MD, Saint Alphonsus Medical Center, Idaho State Board of Medicine 

The stressors of the day to day activities that fade into routine and become almost imperceptible. The added patient at the end of our shift, followed by a phone call that still needs to be completed. The almost mandatory extra hour to finish your medical records and then on to review laboratory and radiology results waiting in your inbox. Only to start again the next day. And on to the next week. And so on.

by Kara Kuntz, MD, Saint Alphonsus Medical Group

Over 6 million Americans are living with dementia. The cost of caring for these individuals is estimated by the Alzheimer’s Association to be 355 billion dollars in 2021. As a local geriatrician, I care for families who experience tremendous frustration over delayed diagnoses, poor efficacy of current drug therapies, lack of insurance coverage for in-home caregiving, and subsequent exhaustion of family members who assume this full-time responsibility with no training or compensation. The emotional and financial cost of this disease demands our attention.