A growing number of Americans are reaching the age where they require end-of-life care. Unfortunately, however, few medical professionals are going into the hospice care field.

Just two years ago, in 2014, approximately 58.9% of hospice patients received care at their own homes. Yet doctors just aren’t entering this subcategory of the medical field, and it’s partly because of the emotional toll it takes on everyone involved.

“I do think it’s a calling to do this kind of work,” said Dr. Jennifer Davis, medical director for Hospice of Davidson County. “You have to have a lot of compassion, communication skills and excellent skills to keep patients comfortable. There simply [are] not enough physicians that specialize in hospice and palliative medicine.”

According to MyFox8, Davis believes that if more and more medical residents are trained in hospice care, it might encourage more doctors to specialize in that field.

“Hopefully new doctors such as myself can rise to that occasion,” said Dr. Tony Nguyen, a resident at Wake Forest School of Medicine currently working in hospice care. “For those who don’t choose that specialty, at least they can get exposed to it so they can help those patients make informed decisions.”

The shortage of doctors entering this specific field isn’t the only issue for the hospice industry. Mix96 reports that a shortage of nurses working in hospice is causing problems as well.

“In the last year or so we have begun to see the effects of the national shortage in nurses on our own recruitment,” said Sue Varvel, Director of Nursing and Clinical Services at Rennie Grove Hospice Care. “We decided we must make a bold move to ensure we are prepared to meet future demand for our services.”

Rennie Grove began a new program, The Preceptorship Program, aimed at recruiting Newly Qualified Nurses to spend at least a year in hospice treatment.

Franciscan St. James Health broke ground on its new patient pavilion and emergency department expansion on May 31. The expansion will happen at its Olympia Fields campus.

With a deadline to be completed in 2018, the new construction is part of a $137 million investment. The Chicago Tribune reports that the investment will help Franciscan St. James in its efforts to reduce the total cost of care, enhance operational efficiency, improve quality and improve performance across its system of care.

In March, the plan for reconstruction was approved by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board. It will consolidate inpatient services at the hospital’s Olympia Fields campus as well as enhance outpatient services in Chicago Heights. As a result, the hospital will be better able to provide healthcare to local residents.

Considering that an average of two clinics open each day and 15,000 urgent care centers are expected to open by 2019, Chicago residents could greatly benefit from improvements such as this. Soon enough, more Americans will have access to healthcare than ever before.

“Our challenge is to keep pace with all of the ongoing, drastic changes in healthcare and healthcare delivery, and to keep providing high quality services,” said Sister Jane Marie Klein, chairperson of the board, Franciscan Alliance, Inc.

In order to accommodate the coming changes, the Olympia Fields campus will be doubled in size and include additional private inpatient rooms, expanded parking, and improved public transportation access. The Chicago Heights Franciscan ExpressCare will also be expanded and offer 24/7 urgent care access to city residents.

The hospital will continue to be a teaching hospital by expanding its primary care network.

“We will select the best and brightest of these physicians we helped to train to expand our primary care network,” said Franciscan St. James President and CEO Arnie Kimmel. “So when our plan is fully implemented, Franciscan St. James will offer the optimum system of care with the facilities, locations and services to promote greater health and wellness in the entire area.”

The Chicago City Council’s Committee on Workforce Development and Audit unanimously approved the earned sick time ordinance proposal, which would require all employers to offer paid sick leave.

Under the ordinance, employees would accrue one hour of paid sick time for every 40 hours worked, capping at five sick days per 12-month period.

The full City Council still needs to consider the proposal, but if passed, Chicago would join 26 other cities, five states, and one county that already offer paid sick time. The legislation would take effect in Chicago on July 1, 2017.

Some business interest groups have criticized the proposal, calling it overcomplicated and inconsiderate to business owners. They are concerned that the proposed law would not provide enough protection for employers to ensure that workers do not abuse it.

“By this language, anyone could call in anytime, without notice, claim an illness, legitimate or not,” argued Paul Fehribach, chef and co-owner at Big Jones, a restaurant with 25 hourly employees who do not currently get paid sick days.

Realistically, offering paid sick leave would increase labor costs by up to 1.5%, according to the nonprofit organization Civic Consulting Alliance. Small business owners, in particular, have expressed frustration with all of the changes that seem to be happening at once, including minimum-wage hikes and the plastic bag ban.

On the other hand, some business owners have shown support for the proposal, saying that offering employees these benefits would reduce turnover and boost morale. “Our employees need to know that we’ve got their backs,” said Dimo’s Pizza owner Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau.

Right now, approximately 42% of Chicago private-sector workers do not have access to paid sick leave, and low-wage workers and Hispanics are the least likely to be given access. Thus, this legislation is intended to protect Chicago residents like Noemi Hernandez, who works as a bartender.

Hernandez, a single mother to an eight-year-old, has too often had to forgo a day’s wages and risk her job to stay home with a sick child. “It’s two losses at once,” she said. “You lose the wage and you have to pay a doctor’s bill.”

Many workers, in Chicago and across the nation, feel compelled to go to work when sick in order to protect their jobs and secure their paychecks. Unfortunately, this decision puts an entire workplace at risk as illnesses spread between coworkers.

According to a National Health Interview Survey, influenza alone is responsible for 200 million days of decreased productivity and 75 million days of work absence.

Chicago’s proposed ordinance is designed to prevent the spread of illness while allowing workers to secure their wages and rest assured that their jobs are safe.

In early 2010, a photographer covered a Guns N’ Roses concert, snapping photos of singer Axl Rose. The images accompanied the paper’s positive review of the show. Shortly after, however, they caught the attention of a heavy metal news magazine, which proceeded to republish the photos under a very different headline: “OMFG Axl Rose is fat.”

This was the beginning of the “Fat Axl,” meme that involves rewriting Guns N’ Roses songs to mock the appearance of 2010-era Rose.

It appears that Rose has finally had enough of it, too. Google received a slew of DMCA copyright notices over the past week requesting the removal of one of those images from the Internet.

However, with approximately 4.49 billion webpages on the internet, Axl may have a bit of a challenge ahead of him.

Not only that, but the band is set to go on a summer stadium tour that includes a July 1 stop at Soldier Field. This has only served to amplify the presence of the meme.

The copyright notices, filed on behalf of Rose, target several cropped versions of the original unflattering photo, along with others that have been fashioned into memes. One image is captioned, “take me down to the bakery city/where the pies have cream and the cakes are tasty.”

It’s entirely understandable why Rose would not like the “Fat Axl” meme, which exists entirely to mock his weight, but in his quest for removal of the images lies a small complication.

As TorrentFreak noted in its report on the complaints, the question of who actually owns the copyright to these photos is in dispute.

Winnipeg Free Press photographer Boris Minkevich took the original photos. Mike Aporius, the paper’s photography and multimedia director, said the Winnipeg Free Press owns the editorial copyright for the photos and hasn’t approved any third-party usage.

And the meme itself? “We were only recently made aware of these memes,” Aporius continued, “and while we ethically don’t approve, viral media is impossible for us to regulate. Welcome to the jungle.”

The company representing Rose, however, has a different story.

The company released a statement to TorrentFreak arguing that Rose owned the copyright to the photos, because “all official / accredited photographers at [Axl Rose] shows sign-off on ‘Photography Permission’ contracts.”

Rose isn’t the first celebrity to want a photo removed from the Internet, either. Celebrities like The Foo Fighters and even Beyoncé have had internet photo disputes.

This kind of situation has been deemed the Streisand Effect, for an incident in 2003 where Barbara Streisand tried — and ultimately failed — to erase an aerial picture of her mansion from an online database used by researchers who study coastal erosion.

The Internet truly is a jungle, and only time will tell if Axl will get his wish.

Hundreds of hopeful fans lined up in downtown Chicago last week to get their hands on tickets to the award-winning musical “Hamilton.” Some even camped out on the sidewalk overnight on Monday, June 20, eager to see this year’s hottest Broadway show.

The line began outside The Private Bank Theatre and wrapped all the way around the block. For many patient people, there was no shade in which to escape from the sweltering 90-degree temperatures, but they claimed suffering through the heat was worth it to score tickets to “Hamilton,” which won 11 Tony Awards.

“I have wanted to see this show since before it opened. I love LLM [Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of the musical], and I have so many friends in New York who’ve seen it, and I’ve envied them so much, because this musical is amazing. It’s about the American experience; the way it’s cast, the way it’s sung, it’s just everything that makes America great,” said Olivia Wong.

The award-winning hip-hop musical about the United States’ first Treasury Secretary was an instant hit among Americans from diverse demographics. The racially and ethnically diverse fans in line in Chicago said that the show’s heterogeneous cast drew them to the musical.

“Hamilton was an immigrant, and as the daughter of immigrants, the theme really stuck with me,” said one patiently waiting fan, Rocio Valladares.

The show opens on September 27 and will run for a total of 199 performances until March 19. Though tickets are available by phone at 800-775-2000 or online at broadwayinchicago.com, fans should expect prices to reach outrageous heights the longer they wait. By 11 a.m. on Tuesday, there were still available tickets advertised online for $117; however, by noon ticket prices were ranging from $369 to $8,000 on the StubHub ticket resale website.

Considering that fans in New York paid upwards of $15,000 per ticket, the people patiently suffering in the 90-degree heat in Chicago seem slightly less insane. The average person has between two and four million sweat glands acting as the body’s coolant system to protect it from overheating, and there’s no question that every single one of them was hard at work for those eager fans trying to score “Hamilton” tickets in Chicago this month.

Southwest Airlines brought in $3.1 billion in shareholder returns, but their pilots allege that they saw none of the profits.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Southwest Airlines Pilots’ Association (SWAPA) created an advertisement they hope to share on a billboard to spread awareness about the issue.

Unfortunately, the pilots had needed the assistance of a federal judge in order to display their advertisement in the first place. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall ordered a temporary restraining order (TRO) allowing the pilots to display the ad at Midway Airport.

A temporary protective order (TPO), used for domestic violence issues, can be terminated after 30 to 90 days, but a TRO, up to the judge’s direction, may only be appealed after a short amount of time. For the SWAPA billboard, Judge Kendall said she would only entertain a stay of the order for 12 hours if the city of Chicago wished to appeal.

The ad was originally banned by the Chicago Department of Aviation because of a ruling regarding advertising last summer.

“All political and public issue advertising” was banned after a People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ad drew controversy despite a lack of any official advertising policies at the airport. The city subsequently adopted new guidelines stating that political ads or ads that involve public issues or opinions are prohibited.

“Contrary to SWAPA’s assertions,” the city’s response read, “its proposed advertisement advocating for raises for its member pilots was not rejected by the Chicago Department of Aviation because of disagreement with SWAPA’s viewpoint.”

Lexology reports that the guidelines in place were too vague, and the city’s ban on the SWAPA ad constituted discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. The pilots union, however, believes the city found the ad “offensive” and thought airline officials would disprove of the billboard.

The SWAPA states that they have not had acceptable contracts for the last four years and have not had a raise since 2011. They are currently in federal mediation with Southwest Airlines, and the pilots union plans to protest upcoming shareholder meetings.