Who am I? Identity question by Vietnamese-born overseas

The following is a guest post by Yveline Van Anh

My parents used to tell me never to forget my roots. “It doesn’t matter that your passport says you’re French or that you live in China,” they would say, “Con luc nao cung se la nguoi Viet Nam. You will always be Vietnamese.”

I was born in a Vietnamese family. I grew up, however, not in Vietnam, but in Paris and Beijing. I spoke and read not only Vietnamese, but also French, Chinese, and English. I was schooled in French, English, and sometimes Chinese. I met people from all over the world and experienced all these cultures. Yet, inside, I still felt Vietnamese. Every day when I came home from school, where everyone was from a different country, I would speak Vietnamese to my parents and eat Vietnamese food. I thought that this made me Vietnamese, that I could only be Vietnamese.

The dash for cash

This is a special guest post by Brian Bartoz.

Taxpayers lose out when state dollars fund local projects

A $250,000 grant for a lakefront pavilion in Highland Park.  A $295,000 grant for decorative streetlights for eight blocks in Chicago’s Eighth Ward. A $70,000 grant to reconstruct an alley in Niles.  A $96,000 grant for bleachers in Greenfield Community Unit District 10.


These projects were among the initiatives in SB 1221 that the Illinois General Assembly voted to approve on June 30, 2009.  This 996-page bill, which became law (PA 96-0039) in July 2009, includes thousands of appropriations for specific organizations, including units of local government and private, non-profit organizations.  Most of the projects listed in the law, including the projects referenced above, are worthy of support at some level of government (e.g., the park district, school district, and city and county levels), but few projects in the law merit state support.

Find the right eye doctor

It can be hard to find the right eye doctor for the first time or have just moved. Here is some basic information if you are looking for someone to help you with your vision. There are two types of eye doctors, optometrists and ophthalmologists. There are about 35,000 optometrists and 19,000 ophthalmologists practicing the U.S.A.

Optometrists

Optometrists obtain their doctorate of optometry upon completion of 4-year graduate education in optometry. Optometric students generally spend the first two years in learning basic sciences and the last two years in learning to refract patients for corrective wears (glasses and contact lens) and examine ocular diseases. Upon graduation and passing the licensing board examinations, optometrists can practice optometry. Clinical residency opportunities are available to optometrists who wish to obtain to advanced clinical competence in an area. These specialty areas include family practice optometry, pediatric optometry, geriatric optometry, vision therapy and rehabilitation, low-vision rehabilitation, cornea and contact lenses, refractive and ocular surgery, and primary eye care optometry, and ocular disease,

Ophthalmologists

Ophthalmologists are complete physicians, either M.D. (doctor of medicine) or D.O. (doctor of osteopathic medicine), who must have obtained their medical degree, completed one year of internship, and followed by 3 years of residency in ophthalmology. Upon completion of internship year and passing the national medical board examinations, these physicians are fully-licensed physicians. During the 3 years of residency in ophthalmology, the resident physicians learn about the eye's anatomy, to treat all spectrum of eye diseases and to perform surgeries of different subspecialties of ophthalmology. There are about nine to ten subspecialties: pediatric, cornea, refractive, glaucoma, neuro-ophthalmology, ocular oncology, ocular pathology, ocular plastics, uveitis, and vitreo-retinal surgery. Upon completing the residency, these physicians can practice ophthalmology and become board-certified after passing the written and oral specialty board examinations.

As the trend of health care delivery has become more specializing, about 30-40% of ophthalmologists choose to spend additional one to three years in fellowships in the above subspecialties.

Which is the right eye doctor?

Osteopathic medicine- excellence across the United States

Osteopathic medicine has enjoyed exponential growth over the past three decades while enrollment in MD schools has remained stagnant. In 1980, there were 17,620 practicing DOs and 1,059 DO graduates. In 2010, there are 63,000 practicing DOs and 3,845 DO graduates. The number of colleges of osteopathic medicine has increased from 15 to 26 colleges and 5 branch campuses. At least three schools and two branch campuses are being planned. Marian University in Indianapolis, IN, Campbell University at Buies Creek, NC, and Southeast Alabama Medical Center in Dothan are applying for accreditation. Interestingly, because of the continuous growth, one in five medical students in the United States is currently enrolled in an osteopathic medical school. Thirty-two percent of the DO student body is made up by minority groups. By 2020, there will be 100,000 DOs practicing in the U.S., more than 6,000 DOs will graduate yearly, and one in four medical students will be DO students.

Relevance of osteopathic medicine

There has been a growing public interest in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in recent years. Osteopathic manipulative therapy, a form of physical manipulation of the body for improvement of health and body function, has been designated as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to data reported in 2007 by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 38% of adults and 12% of children in the United States used some form of CAM that year. According to a 2007 report from the National Center for Statistics, Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on CAM; of this figure, consumers spent $11.9 billion on an estimated 354.2 million visits to CAM practitioners.

Most allopathic medical schools have responded to this public interest by offering some elective instructions in CAM. Even a tentative proposal of core competencies in integrative medicine in undergraduate medical curriculum in allopathic schools was advanced in hope of instilling in graduating physicians the values, knowledge, attitudes and skills to improve physician-patient communication.

• DOs are better positioned to respond to this public interest thanks to osteopathic medicine’s long tradition of a holistic and preventive philosophy to patient care.

Osteopathic medicine

Once in a while, I am asked what is Osteopathic medicine and what is a DO? The answer is a little involved. There are two types of complete physicians, MDs and DOs, who are fully licensed to prescribe medication and practice in all specialties of medicine and surgery. In 2008, there were about 780,000 practicing physicians in the United States, of which 68% were graduates from a U.S. MD school, 25% were graduates from a foreign medical school, and 7% were graduates from a DO school. All these graduates must pass the medical licensing board examinations and complete internships and residencies before being licensed to practice medicine.

What is Osteopathic medicine?