Living Healthy and Aging Well November 12 2022

Joan Somes, a retired emergency room nurse with 40 years of experience, joins Ken Haglind on radio show “Living Healthy and Aging Well” to share ways that will help make our driving a little safer. Joan has received a grant from the Minnesota Department of Transportation Office of Traffic Safety to improve the safety of aging drivers across the state, as well as decrease the number of crashes, injuries, and deaths involving her fellow seniors. Joan has been working with law enforcement and seniors over the last 3 years. She will describe some of the ways aging (and we are all aging) affects our driving skills and actions we can take to counteract those affects. She will talk about a cognitive screening tool that law enforcement (and anyone else) can use to identify when a driver of any age is not safe to get behind the wheel and options to consider when you are concerned about someone’s driving due to physical or thinking capability, sometimes seen with aging. Joan is a member of the Minnesota Emergency Nurses Association whose website contains a “safe driving” page and a list of many resources related to older driver safety at www.minnesotaena.com