Robin Dessel: Sex and the nursing home
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2013
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When two residents of her nursing home fell in love, sexual rights advocate Robin Dessel had to decide how the staff would handle their rendezvous. Robin has over 25 years of experience at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, and oversees vision care, memory care and sexual rights and expression. Robin co-authored the nation's first sexual rights policy for residential health care, recognizing the sexual rights of all residents including those with dementia, entitled "Residents' Rights to Intimacy and Sexual Expression" (1995; updated 2013). Robin is a frequent guest educator and presenter at national and state conferences including: Leading Age; Leading Age New York; Leading Age Florida; American Society on Aging; National Aging and Law; NYC Elder Abuse; NYS Department of Health Surveillance Training Academy. She has been featured in such prestigious media outlets as Bloomberg News, BBC, ABCNews.com, Newsweek.com, WNBC, NPR and Chicago Tribune. Every week the Story Collider brings you a true, personal story about science. Find more and subscribe to our podcast at our website: http://storycollider.org/
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Transcript
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| 0:28.2 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:31.4 | Is NYU scientists the... |
| 0:33.2 | I felt... |
| 0:34.0 | I felt... |
| 0:34.1 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:36.2 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:39.3 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:41.3 | Hey, everyone. I'm Ben Lilly, where we bring you true stories of how science has affected people's lives. |
| 0:59.6 | This week's story is from Robin Dessel. |
| 1:02.0 | The story was recorded in September 2013 at Littlefield in Brooklyn as part of a partnership with everyday health. |
| 1:08.8 | The theme of the evening was aging. |
| 1:16.9 | Thank you. part of a partnership with everyday health. The theme of the evening was aging. My story begins with yet another revelation in my own personal life, and that might seem somewhat |
| 1:27.1 | commonplace to you when I tell you, but there's |
| 1:30.1 | also an oddity about it. And the disclaimer or the commonplace is the fact that as a kid, I grew |
| 1:38.9 | up with an awesome fear of aging, sickness, death, and dying. All of that to me was absolutely |
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