The Future of Health Care for the Elderly†

Abstract

Problems facing the modern health care worker are examined. These include population changes, the changing pattern of disease, the psychosocial aspects of aging, and altered pathophysiologic mechanisms. The major future requirements in health care for the elderly are outlined. Greater emphasis should be placed upon education in the disciplines of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. Society needs to be made more aware of the realities of aging. Health care professionals need to develop their communication skills and to practice more effective teamwork. Greater coordination of the components of health care delivery systems will be needed in order to provide comprehensive and continuing health services. Research into the true and changing needs of the elderly recipients of health care should be emphasized. Prevention and early detection of disease is an important focus in Geriatric Medicine for the future.

Geriatric rehabilitation on an acute‐care medical unit

“…A tragedy of geriatric medicine is the fact that almost as many elderly patients are made worse by our hospitals as are benefited by them (Hunt 1980). Several factors have been identified as having the potential to adversely affect elderly patients in an acute-care environment: the anxiety of being ill in a strange environment; a decreased sensorium; fear of being institutionalized; fear of death; crises-oriented prioritization of care; a hospital's confusing technology; the pace of a hospital unit with its heavy demands on its staff; the multiplicity of staff; the level of staff caring for the no-longer acutely ill; the staffs lack of knowledge of geriatrics; and, on some units, a pervasive negativism toward any geriatric patient's rehabilitation (Henriksen 1978;Hunt 1980;Munoz & Mesick 1979;Pomerantz 1982;Skeleton 1977;Stout 1979). Many elderly patients successfully manage the stress of hospitalization; others, lacking needed physical and/or cognitive resources, become fearful of being abandoned, fearful of being institutionalized, and fearful of dying.…”