Anyone who has been in an emergency room knows how chaotic it is. There always seems to not be enough beds for all the people that need help. For the elderly, it’s even worse. It’s loud and there are so many moving parts it’s scary. There’s no privacy and cots are too hard on their bodies. Emergency rooms are chaos for seniors.
Emergency Rooms are Chaos for Seniors
Luckily, people are starting to recognize that the emergency room system needs to change. Many hospitals are making structural changes and new procedures to make things more senior friendly.
This is good because the senior population is growing fast.
Emergency rooms are good for obvious or easy to solve problems. They struggle with the bigger picture when it comes to seniors. Seniors can have odd symptoms with similar diseases or disorders and it can be hard to tell them apart.
For example, they can have nausea instead of chest pain when they are having a heart attack. They also can feel less pain and can’t tell doctors how dire the situation is.
Seniors need comprehensive screening procedures to check medications and health history. They should also aim to not have them admitted into the hospital if it can be helped. This is because it can be hard for seniors to go back to their original state after being hospitalized.
“We want to look at all their needs and problems, including medical and social problems. We need to be aware of their risk of falls, unexpected complications from patients taking multiple medications, cognitions and mental status, among other things. Is the person getting the food they need? Is their home safe from basic fall hazards?”—Sia Agha, chief medical officer at the West Health Institute in San Diego
This also means keeping this in mind when seniors show up with an acute chronic problem that has them coming back to the emergency room. That way they don’t have to come back over and over again.
New Accreditation Program
The American College of Emergency Physicians created an accreditation program to encourage emergency departments to have better approaches for senior patients.
These accreditations have certain requirements like having both doctors and nurses with specialized geriatric training. There’s also environmental criteria like having mobility aids and easy access to water.
So far only 22 hospital ERs have been accredited. But, the people who run the program guess that around 5,000 ERs will apply and get certification.
Read more here.