Our unhealthy love of reality TV bullies

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Reality TV shows twice the number of aggressive acts as other shows


• Watching aggressive acts on TV can influence viewers' behavior


• Adult victims of bullying suffer from poor health as a result

Editor's note: Don't miss the premiere of "The Bully Effect" on "AC360" at 10 p.m. ET tonight.

(CNN) -- A red-faced Gordon Ramsay gets nose-to-nose with an older man and shouts, "Wake up!" He calls another chef's food "rotten." He reduces a middle-aged woman to hysterical tears. And all that's just in the opening credits of "Kitchen Nightmares."

For the next hour of the British culinary icon's popular reality TV series, there is little in the way of praise or pats on the back for the chefs he's coaching. Instead, he swears. He throws food. He calls people "stupid" and "disgusting pigs." His entire performance is based on sharp criticism and what some may argue is bullying-type behavior. Viewers eat it up.

Nightmarish behavior is the stuff reality TV shows are made of. Ramsay is certainly not alone. Tami Roman on VH1's "Basketball Wives" calls her friends "bitches" and physically attacks one of them in front of a fancy Miami restaurant. A study of the U.K.'s version of "The Apprentice" found it depicted 85 aggressive acts an hour. "American Idol" showed 57 aggressive acts an hour.

At the same time, a competing message has emerged in the form of high-profile public service efforts. Earnest actors make anti-bullying videos. Children's TV networks create community awareness campaigns. You can even buy "Stop Bullying" hoodies.

Could your child be a bully?

What message gets through? And which do we emulate at work or school?

Studies show that while bullying can manifest as overt bad behavior like physical violence or screaming, more often than not it can be more covert.

Enough is enough: Say no to bullying

Bullying behavior can include people who spread rumors about someone or make a person a regular target of gossip, researchers say. They regularly question someone's competence in front of others. They call people names. They consistently exclude their victims from social events or meetings. They don't give credit where it is due. If they are in a workplace they set impossible deadlines or assign the victim to several pointless tasks to set the victim up to fail or to feel like they don't have any worth.

Some psychologists worry that watching reality TV which can glorify bullying will have negative long-term consequences.

Mean girls: Fighting on reality TV

"Research shows in the short term our own concepts of aggression are activated in the brain when we watch these shows, and we are primed to behave aggressively," said psychologist Sarah Coyne.

The Brigham Young University assistant professor has authored dozens of studies that examine the impact aggressive behavior in the media has on its viewers. Reality TV, she found, depicts nearly twice the number of aggressive acts as dramas or comedies.

What motivates aggressive behavior like bullying is complicated, but Coyne says studies have shown consistently that viewers may start to imitate what they watch.

While she knows of no research examining the long-term impact of reality TV, a several decades-long study shows people who watched aggressive and violent behavior on TV as kids were more likely to be aggressive, hit their spouses and engage in other inappropriate behavior later in life. Other studies of the impact of media violence on youth show that behavior that appears realistic is more likely to be imitated than fictionalized behavior.

"I think certainly people who watch Gordon Ramsay know that behavior is an extreme, but it can creep slowly into the ways the viewers react in real life," she said.

CNN has reached out to Ramsay's production company but a request for comment was not immediately returned.

A popularly cited 2011 Girl Scout Research Institute study of more than 1,000 11- to 17-year-old girls found that those who said they regularly watched reality TV did "accept and expect a higher level of drama, aggression, and bullying in their own lives as well," compared to non-viewers.

About 78% of girls who watched reality TV thought gossip was a normal part of a relationship between girls, while only 54% of girls who didn't watch it did. Another 68% of reality TV viewers thought it was natural for girls to be "catty and competitive" with each other, while only 50% of non-viewers did.

Some 63% of the girls that watched reality TV said, "It's hard for me to trust other girls." Only 50% of those who did not watch reality TV shared the same view.

AC360: Fighting for your bullied child

What may be even more troubling about the popularity of this programming, says Coyne, is that many of the people who exhibit bullying-type behavior on reality TV programs are "very rich and very successful." Viewers may unintentionally model their behavior after them if they start to think it's the way to get ahead.

Playgrounds certainly aren't the only place where bullies lurk -- they may also be in your office.

About 35% of employee in a 2010 study reported being bullied in the workplace; an additional 15% witness it.

That means bullying is four times more common than sexual harassment or racial discrimination, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute. And while there can be legal consequences with sexual or racial harassment or discrimination, there is no legal protection against bullying at work.

"We are taking a pounding daily from bullies, but for the most part it is still an invisible problem," said psychologist Gary Namie, who runs the institute. "And it has huge consequences and costs businesses a fortune."

Why telling bullying victims to 'just fight back' doesn't work

A 2013 study showed that the adult targets of bullying can suffer deeply as a consequence. They experience higher incidents of alcoholism, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue and insomnia. They struggle with concentration issues and poorer health and have lower self-esteem.

If so many people are victims of bullying, why do they come home and watch it on television?

Studies show watching others suffer in part "satiates a feeling of vengeance," Coyne says. So if a victim can't get revenge at work, at least they can watch someone else suffer. Namie believes watching someone humiliated on TV also makes people feel safer and more comfortable because, in this case, at least it is not happening to them.

"We bemoan the loss of compassion in society, but we revere this severe level of aggression in these programs, and I think it is a real problem," Namie said.

Yet reality TV remains popular and is likely to continue to dominate our airwaves because people keep watching.

"In the end, being nice makes for dull entertainment," Namie said.

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Man trapped in 100-foot-wide sinkhole near Tampa

Scene where 100-foot-wide sinkhole suddenly opened under bedroom of home in Brandon, Fla., near Tampa, trapping sleeping man late on Feb. 28, 2013 / WTSP-TV/CBS

BRANDON, Fla. A large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa, trapping a 34-year-old man in the rubble.

The home collapsed late Thursday in a Brandon neighborhood. By early Friday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials determined the home had become too unstable to continue rescue efforts.

Fire rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said Bracken Engineering officials determined the home's bedroom is the center of the sinkhole, which measures about 100 feet across.

Listening devices and cameras were placed in the hole but there had been no contact with the missing man by early Friday.

Engineers condemned the house, reports CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP-TV, which says the man was asleep when the hole opened.

Engineering officials will return later Friday morning with more sophisticated monitoring equipment to determine the actual diameter and depth of the sinkhole.

Damico said the man's brother was trying to pull the man out of the sinkhole when Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies arrived. The first deputy on the scene pulled the brother from the still-collapsing hole. She said the brother and the deputy were not injured.

Officials evacuated neighbors living on either side of the home.

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Sequester Set to Trigger Billions in Cuts

Nobody likes the sequester.

Even the word is enough to send shivers of fiscal panic, or sheer political malaise, down the spines of seasoned politicians and news reporters. And today, the sequester will almost certainly happen, a year and a half after its inception as an intentionally unpalatable event amid the stalemate of the debt-limit crisis in 2011.

Automatic budget cuts will be triggered across federal agencies, as President Obama will be required to order sequestration into effect before midnight Friday night. The federal bureaucracy will implement its various plans to save the money it's required to save.

Now that the sequester will probably happen, here are some questions and answers about it:

1. HOW BIG IS IT?

The cuts were originally slated for $109 billion this year, but after the fiscal-cliff deal postponed the sequester for two months by finding alternate savings, the sequester will amount to $85 billion over the remainder of the year. Over the rest of the year, nondefense programs will be cut by nine percent, and defense programs will be cut by 13 percent.

If carried out over 10 years (as designed), the sequester will amount to $1.2 trillion in total.

2. WHAT WILL BE CUT, SPARED?

Most government programs will be cut, including both defense and nondefense spending, with the cuts distributed evenly (by dollar amount) over those two categories.

Some vital domestic entitlements, however, will be spared. Social Security checks won't shrink; nor will Veterans Administration programs. Medicare benefits won't get cut, but payments to providers will shrink by two percent. The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), food stamps, Pell grants, and Medicaid will all be shielded from the sequester.

But lots of things will get cut. The Obama administration has warned that a host of calamities will befall vulnerable segments of the population.

3. WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO BAD?

Questions persist over whether or not it really does.

The sequester will mean such awful things because it forces agencies to cut things indiscriminately, instead of simply stripping money from their overall budgets.

But some Republicans, including Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, have suggested that federal agencies have plenty of flexibility to implement these cuts while avoiding the worst of the purported consequences. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal accused President Obama of trying to "distort" the severity of the sequester. The federal government will still spend more money than it did last year, GOP critics of sequester alarmism have pointed out.

The White House tells a different story.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the sequestration law forces agency heads to cut the same percentage from each program. If that program is for TSA agents checking people in at airports, the sequester law doesn't care, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano can't do anything about it.

Agency heads do have some authority to "reprogram" funds, rearranging their money to circumvent the bad effects. But an OMB official told ABC News that "these flexibilities are limited and do not provide significant relief due to the rigid nature of the way in which sequestration is required by law to be implemented."

4. WHEN WILL THE WORST OF IT START?

Not until April -- but some of the cuts could be felt before then.

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Taiwan ebullient over Ang Lee's Oscar

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Ang Lee's name beamed on building in Taiwan after Oscar win


• Lee, born in Taiwan, won award for best director for "Life of Pi"


• Lee's win created excitement in Taiwan and China, both claimed him as their own


• Ryan: "In some ways it feels like 'Linsanity' all over again"

Editor's note: Andrew Ryan is a host and producer at Radio Taiwan International, a government-owned station that broadcasts in several languages and countries. He first came to Taiwan in 1996 as a Fulbright scholar and has spent the last 16 years as a translator and observer of politics and culture.

Taipei (CNN) -- It's not every territory in the world that puts an Oscar-winning director's name up in lights on a towering building. But that's just the sort of thing that happens in Taiwan -- and it did on Monday night after Ang Lee picked up his second "Best Director" Oscar, this time for "Life of Pi."

The moment wasn't just celebrated in grand statements, but in small scenes played out in front of televisions across Taiwan when his name was announced.

I was at a TV station in Taipei that was broadcasting live coverage of the Oscars, working with a team of translators that was creating the subtitles for the rebroadcast. When Lee's name was announced the office erupted in applause. Down the hallway, more cheering could be heard.

READ: Oscar winners: Analysis of who won

I couldn't help but think back to the Athens Games in 2004, when Chen Shih-hsin won Taiwan's first ever Olympic gold medal (under the team name "Chinese Taipei"). Even veteran news anchors shed tears when the young taekwondo star defeated her Cuban rival.

It would be reductive to suggest that these displays of patriotism are simply the response of a small country that just doesn't crank out that many Oscar winners or Olympic golds. It also speaks of a place that has been largely marginalized in the international community.

Today, Taiwan has just 23 official diplomatic allies -- mostly other marginalized nations, in Central America and Africa. That's because China still sees Taiwan as part of its territory more than 60 years after the Chinese Nationalists retreated to the island at the end of a Civil War against the Communists. The Nationalists -- or Kuomintang -- are now the ruling party in a democratic Taiwan, which is officially called the Republic of China (ROC) -- not to be confused with the People's Republic of China on the Mainland.

Having lost its seat at the United Nations to the PRC in 1971, the ROC found itself with a diminished voice in the international community. It turned to manufacturing and technology in the 1980s, spurring on what is now referred to as an "economic miracle." Today, with its economy struggling to move past the global economic downturn, Taiwan has added the arts, sports, and even baking to its repertoire.

READ: Oscars 2013: Hollywood gets political

What's striking about Lee's win is that it's not just people in Taiwan who were quick to claim him as one of their own. In China, the state-run Xinhua news agency referred to him as "Chinese-American." While Taiwanese media latched onto the portion of Lee's acceptance speech when he thanked Taiwan and the central city of Taichung where much of the movie was filmed, Xinhua's main story included Lee's line of thanks to the 3,000 people who worked on the film for "believing this story and sharing this incredible journey with me."

In some ways it feels like "Linsanity" all over again, when Taiwan and China both claimed basketball star Jeremy Lin as their own, leaving the international media struggling to chart the dangerous waters of identity politics to correctly describe him.

VIEW: Photos from the red carpet

A very small voice at the fringe of the discussion wonders why it's important for people to know that Lin's paternal grandmother lives in Taiwan and referred to him as "a real Taiwanese," or that Lee grew up in Tainan and still loves to visit his favorite noodle shop there. Others in Taiwan question why a nation's confidence should be based on its success in the international community.

When Ang Lee's name was announced, the office erupted in applause. Down the hallway, more cheering could be heard.
Andrew Ryan

With China looming to the north, now the world's second biggest economy and wielding an influence that's verging on "superpower" status, the metaphor of Jonah and the whale comes to mind. The Taiwanese electorate is sharply divided on how it feels about the way ties with China have warmed ever since President Ma Ying-jeou first took office in 2008. The benefits are obvious, considering China is Taiwan's largest trade partner, but some worry that it could lead to a loss in autonomy.

INTERACTIVE: Oscars by numbers

The Ma administration has been mindful of the nationalistic rhetoric of the opposition, and although the president was born in Hong Kong, he has referred to himself in the past as "Taiwanese as well as Chinese." Ma was also quick to congratulate Lee following the Oscars, and to urge others to follow in the director's footsteps and "work hard at promoting Taiwan to the world."

Lee is just one name on a growing list of national heroes that both the government and the private sector have celebrated in recent years for putting Taiwan on the map: people like fashion designer Jason Wu, who moved to Canada from Taiwan and has created garments for U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama; master baker Wu Pao-chun, who beat the French patissiers at their own competition -- Les Masters de la Boulangerie in 2010; Yani Tseng, the world's number one female golfer; and even the humble vegetable seller-turned-philanthropist Chen Shu-chu, who was selected by Time Magazine as one of its heroes of 2010.

So what are people saying when they embrace these heroes as Taiwanese? They are saying "Taiwan may be small and diplomatically isolated, but it deserves to have a voice in the international community." While Lee may not speak about politics and no longer creates movies about Taiwan, he does have a voice and people do listen. And that's worth spreading in lights across the world's second-tallest building.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Andrew Ryan.

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SingPost sets up S$10m fund to help low-wage employees

SINGAPORE: SingPost is setting up a $10 million "Inclusivity Fund", which will benefit its low-wage workers.

Over 70 per cent of the fund will go to helping the workers cope with the rising cost of living. This will include retention awards and enhancements to their wages.

Part of the fund will also go into training to help them upgrade their skills.

Staff with school-going children can also stand to benefit from bursaries and scholarships.

The fund will be disbursed over five years and benefit some 3,400 workers.

The company will also be investing about S$30 million to enhance its delivery and improve processes.

- CNA/xq

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Cops: Bikini baristas too bare

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Boeing runs 787 battery fix by Japanese officials

TOKYO Boeing CEO Ray Conner met with Japan's transport minister and other officials in Tokyo on Thursday to explain his company's proposal for resolving problems with the 787 Dreamliner's lithium-ion batteries that have kept the aircraft grounded for over a month.

Conner met with Akihiro Ota, who heads the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, and with the director general of the Civil Aviation Bureau, to explain the proposed solution to the problem of the batteries overheating, Boeing said.

Connor met earlier with All Nippon Airways, Boeing's launch customer with 17 of the 787s, said ANA spokeswoman Megumi Tezuka. She said the contents of the discussion were confidential.

A staffer at Japan Airlines headquarters in Tokyo said he could not confirm if Conner had already met with JAL executives.

Boeing's plan, presented to U.S. regulators last week, calls for revamping the batteries to prevent potential short-circuiting from spreading from any one battery cell to others.

Conner told reporters in Tokyo that the proposal takes into account "any possible events."

"It is not an interim solution. This is a permanent solution," the Kyodo News Service quoted him as saying. "We are very hopeful that we will get the aircraft back in the air very soon."

Officials in the U.S. said Boeing would fix the problem with the batteries overheating by putting more robust ceramic insulation around each of the battery's eight cells so as to prevent any thermal runaway, a chemical reaction that leads to progressively hotter temperatures that was found in damaged batteries in JAL and ANA incidents.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is considering the plan.

Dreamliners were grounded worldwide after an overheated battery aboard an ANA 787 domestic flight forced an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16. Investigators are still probing the cause of that event, and of a Jan. 7 fire that erupted in an auxiliary power unit battery of a JAL 787 about a half-hour after the plane landed at Boston's Logan International Airport.

There are a total of 50 of the planes in service worldwide, and Boeing had orders for 800 of the airliners at the time they were grounded.

ANA has extended the cancellations of its 787 flights to May 31, with the total number of flights affected at nearly 3,600 and involving some 167,820 passengers. JAL has cancelled its 787 flights through Mar. 30.

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Benedict Pledges 'Obedience' to New Pope

In his farewell remarks to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI, the first pontiff to resign in nearly 600 years, promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor.

Benedict, in a morning meeting at the Vatican, urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.

Benedict, 85, is spending a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.

His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace. Despite the historical nature of Benedict's resignation, not all cardinals attended the event.

With their first working meeting not until Monday, only around 100 cardinals were set to attend, the Vatican press office said Wednesday. Those who are there for Benedict's departure will be greeted by seniority.

Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.

Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address

In the evening, at 5:00 p.m. local time, Benedict will leave the Vatican palace for the last time to head to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence outside Rome. Before his departure, the German-born theologian will say some goodbyes in the Courtyard of San Damaso, inside the Vatican, first to his Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and then to the Swiss Guards who have protected him as pontiff.

9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI

From there it is a short drive to a heliport for the 15-minute flight via helicopter to Castel Gandolfo, just south of the city. Benedict will not be alone on his journey, accompanied by members of the Pontifical Household such as two private secretaries, the head of protocol, his personal physician and his butler.

Once Benedict lands in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, he will be greeted a group of dignitaries, such as the governor of the Vatican City state Giovanni Bertello, two bishops, the director of the pontifical villas, and the mayor and parish priest. Off the helicopter and into a car, Benedict will head to the palace that he will call home for the coming months. From a window of the palace, Benedict will make one final wave to the crowd at the papal retreat.

It is there, at 8:00 p.m., that Benedict's resignation will take effect once and for all. Once the gates to the residence close, the Swiss Guards will leave Benedict's side for the last time, their time protecting the pontiff completed.

Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service

For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure is bittersweet. Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.

"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."

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Yahoo CEO right to cut remote work?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Raymond Fisman: Marissa Mayer needs to revive Yahoo, and face time at the office is key


• Fisman: Granted, this goes against Utopian vision of everyone working from cafes


• Fisman: In-person work means innovations, avoids misunderstood directives


• He says more jobs will get done and it'll encourage those who work in a half-empty office

Editor's note: Raymond Fisman is the Lambert Family professor of social enterprise at the Columbia Business School. He is the co-author, with Tim Sullivan, of "The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office."

(CNN) -- When Yahoo's relatively new CEO Marissa Mayer decreed that workers would be required to show up at the office rather than work remotely, the immediate backlash from outsiders was mostly on the side of the angry Yahoo employees who were losing the comfort and convenience of telecommuting. Inside the company, reactions were mixed.

It struck a deep chord, contrary as it was to the techno-utopian impulse that has helped define Silicon Valley: the idea that someday soon we'll all be working in coffee shops or at kitchen tables, with broadband connections replacing in-person interactions.

Mayer may have been extreme in her demands for face time at the office, but it's the right call for a leader who is working to turn around one of the Internet's laggards.

Raymond Fisman

First, let's consider what's at stake for the company and what Mayer is hoping to accomplish. Yahoo is famous for having bungled its position as a one-time Internet leader. Mayer was brought on specifically to revitalize the benighted company after the departure of Jerry Yang; the firing of Carol Bartz, and the departures of another CEO who inflated his resume and an interim director. All the while, Yahoo has been a company in search of a direction.

What does the end of telecommuting have to do with giving the company a sound footing? The reasons go well beyond the obvious issue of reining in slackers who have taken advantage of Yahoo's reportedly lax monitoring of work done from home.

Talk Back: Is Yahoo wrong to end telecommuting?

Jackie Reses, Yahoo's head of human relations, has it exactly right in the memo she wrote to employees about the policy: Personal interaction is still the most effective way of conveying a company's direction, and keeping tabs on what different parts of the organization are up to. And that's what Mayer has to do with all of Yahoo's 11,500 employees to succeed.

What do in-person meetings accomplish that e-mail can't? Part of the answer lies in time use surveys of CEOs that go back nearly 40 years.

Management scholar Henry Mintzberg was among the first to track how top managers spend their time in the early 1970s. Much to his surprise, he found that around 80% of their time was spent in face-to-face meetings; the subjects of his study had few stretches of more than 10 minutes at a time to themselves.

More recent time use studies by researchers at Harvard, the London School of Economics and Columbia have found that little has changed. Despite the IT revolution, business leaders still spend 80% of their time in face-to-face meetings.

The reason is that there's only so much that one can glean from a written report or a spreadsheet. To cut through the hidden agendas, and office politics, most of the time you need to look someone in the eye and ask them, "Really? How exactly would that work?" It is this probing and questioning that allows effective managers to gather the scraps of information needed to understand what's really going on.

Similarly, all the way down the organizational chart, person-to-person interactions are crucial to ensure that an organization's change of direction isn't misrepresented or garbled in its retelling.

The bland proclamations made in reports and e-mails are given clearer meaning through the way they're communicated in the "high fidelity" that only personal interaction will allow. In-person meetings can also help teams avoid misunderstandings: As one of our friends who runs a virtual workplace puts it, with e-mail exchanges alone, everyone starts to get a bit paranoid.

Finally, the Yahoo memo notes that it's hard to innovate via e-mail exchanges or the occasional agenda-filled meeting. New ideas spring up through chance encounters in the cafeteria line and impromptu office meetings. It's an assertion that's backed up by academic research highlighting the importance of physical proximity in driving scientific progress.

Work at home? Share productivity tips

Yet there are rarely benefits without cost. Lots of tasks are easily managed from a distance. A large number of the affected Yahoo employees are customer-service representatives who aren't going to be driving innovation at the company anyway.

In one study of telecommuting at a Chinese online travel agency, customer-service reps were both happier and more productive when working from home -- probably Yahoo service reps aren't any different from their Chinese counterparts in this regard. And every Yahoo employee surely has some aspects of their jobs that could be done just as well at the kitchen table as in an office cubicle.

But it's hard to create a norm of "physically together" if the office is always half-empty. And once it becomes that way, the half that have been showing up will be less and less inclined to bother. Finally, such a shocking and provocative directive will most certainly have the effect of imbuing the organization with the sense of urgency it needs to get the job done.

Will Yahoo employees come around to appreciating the change? Not necessarily the ones that liked to sleep in or work on a startup on Yahoo's dime, but it may be welcomed by the ones already showing up. Will it be damaging to morale? Possibly, though it may help Yahoo employees to remember that, if they're successful, the change is likely to be temporary.

But the job of the CEO isn't to maximize worker happiness. It's to make sure they get their jobs done. And in driving change at Yahoo, Mayer thinks they need to show up at the office.

Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter.

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The opinions in this commentary are solely those of Raymond Fisman.

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Rehabilitative care innovation can alleviate manpower crunch: govt

SINGAPORE: The government said the use of technology not only accelerates the rehabilitation process of patients, but also helps ease manpower shortages in healthcare.

The latest in "rehab innovations" for those with disabilities are on display at the inaugural Rehab Tech Asia exhibition in Singapore.

The showcase includes a robot arm which allows users who are paralysed in their upper bodies to do daily functions, such as drinking a glass of water.

Laurie Piquet, director of rehabilitation development at KINOVA, said: "When we demonstrate this to users, often the first comments that we have are, 'that's the first time I'm drinking a glass of water by myself'."

The innovation from Canada is compatible with any powered wheelchair and can be controlled by a joystick or through neck movements.

A special wheelchair also improves mobility by making it easier for users to climb stairs and cross pavements.

Other than technology for patients to use, there are also devices for caregivers.

"The Body Up", distributed by Lifeline, is a transfer assist device for bed-ridden patients. The contraption can be used to lift a patient who weighs less than 120kg.

With a growing demand for special needs care, those in the field of rehabilitation said such technology can alleviate problems of manpower shortage.

Dr Kong Keng He, senior consultant at department of rehabilitation medicine at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, said: "It is still very hospital-centric. The patient goes to the hospital to get treatment. I think it will be better off to make it more patient-centric. Deploy this treatment, whether it is rehabilitation, back to the community. And it's always possible for community centres, day rehabilitation centres to acquire these equipment and to have patients to receive their therapy there."

Minister of State for Health Dr Amy Khor agreed, saying the high cost of some technology may be offset by productivity gains in the long run.

She said: "Where it is viable and applicable, I think we should adopt them because it's helpful in terms of improving, accelerating the rehabilitation experience as well as in terms of better use of manpower, improving productivity, and this is something we need to look at. Where it is still costly, I think technology will develop and we will have to continue to monitor this."

With the recent enhancements made to the Senior's Mobility and Enabling Fund, Dr Khor said the subsides should encourage the elderly to go for rehabilitation services within the community.

On how the fund will be disbursed to help home care patients, especially those who are not in touch with intermediate- and long-term care providers, Dr Khor said the Agency for Integrated Care will work with the operators to help spread awareness of the fund. The agency will also work with the grassroots organisations and Community Development Councils to publicise the fund among needy residents.

- CNA/xq

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