Just a few years ago, a graduate from Brown University medical school had just an inkling about how to care for the elderly. Now

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问题     Just a few years ago, a graduate from Brown University medical school had just an inkling about how to care for the elderly. Now, Brown and other U. S. medical schools are plugging geriatric (老年) courses into their curricula.
    The U.S. Census Bureau projects the number of elderly Americans will nearly double to 71 million by 2030.  The first members of the Baby Boomer generation, so named for the explosion in births in the years after World War Two, turn 65 in three years. In addition, people are living longer than ever.
    "The first ripples of the silver tsunami are lapping at the shores of our country, but there is not a coordinated or strategic response taking place in America," said Richard Besdine, who is direetor of the geriatrics division at Brown University medical school in Providence.
    Geriatries has never been a field of choice for young doctors. Elderly care doctors are paid less than most other physicians and surgeons and the aged can be hard to treat.  They have complicated medical histories and their ailments, even such routine illnesses as pneumonia (肺炎), can be more difficult to diagnose because they may be masked by other conditions.  Also, drugs can affect them differently than middle-aged adults." It’s a hard job; it’s not paid very well; it’s complicated; and there’s very little status within the hierarchy of medical specialties to being a geriatric physician," said Gavin Hougham, senior program officer and manager of medicine programs at the John A. Hartford Foundation.
    Out of 800 000 doctors in the United States, roughly 7 000 are geriatricians, Hougham said. The country needs another 13 000 to adequately care for today’s older population, according to the American Geriatrics Society. The shortfall could reach 36 000 by 2030.
    To help counter that, private groups are bankrolling medical schools’ emphasis on aging. The Hartford Foundation has given more than $40 million to 27 schools to train faculty in elderly care, and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation has given more than $100 million to 30 schools to include more geriatrics content.
    "If they don’t learn it, they still have to deal with it," Hougham said. "It’s not that not learning geriatrics will cause these older people to go away. They’re coming whether we’re ready or not. "
What does the word "inkling" mean in paragraph 1?

选项 A、Inadequate training.
B、Profound knowledge.
C、Extensive education.
D、Slight understanding.

答案D

解析 第一段说几年前布朗大学医学院的毕业生对如何照顾老人还只是略有所知,而现在布朗大学医学院和美国其他一些医学院正在把老年医学课程加入学校的课程表。
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