The third edition of the definitive international reference book on all aspects of the medical care of older persons will provide every physician involved in the care of older patients with a comprehensive resource on all the clinical problems they are likely to encounter, as well as on related psychological, philosophical, and social issues.
As the first of the nation's 78 million baby boomers begin reaching age 65 in 2011, they will face a health care workforce that is too small and woefully unprepared to meet their specific health needs. Retooling for an Aging America calls for bold initiatives starting immediately to train all health care providers in the basics of geriatric care and to prepare family members and other informal caregivers, who currently receive little or no training in how to tend to their aging loved ones. The book also recommends that Medicare, Medicaid, and other health plans pay higher rates to boost recruitment and retention of geriatric specialists and care aides. Educators and health professional groups can use Retooling for an Aging America to institute or increase formal education and training in geriatrics. Consumer groups can use the book to advocate for improving the care for older adults. Health care professional and occupational groups can use it to improve the quality of health care jobs.
This background paper, prepared by two members of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Strengthening the Geriatric Content of Medical Education, addresses the progress made in physicians' geriatric and gerontological education. The report appears in six chapters. After a brief introduction on health care reform and medical education, geriatric medicine and geriatricians are discussed in chapter 2. Some of the topics examined here include the historical development of geriatrics, physician certification, and the utilization and financing of health services. Chapter 3 analyzes past efforts to develop geriatrics and explores increases in geriatric faculty, geriatric fellowship programs and residencies, continuing medical education, and obstacles to the development of academic geriatrics. Chapter 4 assesses the demand for geriatricians and faculty, while in chapter 5, some strategies to strengthen physicians' geriatrics training are presented. Some of these strategies include revised financial policies, the revamping of service delivery, the strengthening of faculty development and academic programs, and recruiting and marketing ideas. The last chapter comments briefly on the 1993 Institute of Medicine Report. The recommendations made in the above report were grouped into five categories: (1) improved education in geriatrics; (2) leadership centers; (3) enhanced attractiveness of geriatrics; (4) revision in payment policies; and (5) research support. (RJM)
Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.
Elderly Care Medicine Lecture Notes provides all the necessary information, within one short volume, for a sound introduction to the particular characteristics and needs of elderly patients. Presented in a user-friendly format, combining readability with high-quality illustrations, this eighth edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect advances in knowledge on how disease presents in elderly people, and changes in management practice, particularly regarding stroke, dementia, delirium, and cancer. New for this edition, Elderly Care Medicine Lecture Notes also features: More treatment tables and boxes throughout for rapid access and revision Expansion of material on polypharmacy and prescribing Discussion of emotional support, counselling and spirituality Advice for doctors on breaking bad news and end-of-life care Consideration of ethical and legal issues A companion website at www.lecturenoteseries.com/elderlycaremed features appendices which can be used as guidelines in a clinical setting, key revision points for each chapter, further reading suggestions, and extended content for specialty training in geriatrics. Not only is this book a great starting point to support initial teaching on the topic, but it is also easy to dip in and out of for reference or revision at the end of a module, rotation or final exams. Whether you need to develop or refresh your knowledge of geriatrics, Elderly Care Medicine Lecture Notes presents 'need to know' information for all those involved in treating elderly people.
This book provides family doctors with a wealth of evidence-based indications and tips regarding geriatric medicine and approaches for the management of older patients, to be applied in daily practice. After discussing old and new features of healthy ageing and the approaches required in Family Medicine Consultation, the text introduces key elements of geriatric medicine such as frailty, sarcopenia, and the comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA), before describing a range of characteristics unique to older patients in different contexts, with a dedicated section on Palliative Care. The role of polypharmacy and the importance of quaternary prevention and deprescribing are also addressed. Finally, the book emphasizes both the importance of a humanistic approach in caring and the approach of research and meta-research in geriatrics. Though many texts explore the role of primary care professionals in geriatric medicine, the role of family doctors in older people care has not yet been clearly addressed, despite the growing burden of ageing, which has been dubbed the “silver tsunami.” Family physicians care for individuals in the context of their family, community, and culture, respecting the autonomy of their patients. In negotiating management plans with their patients, family doctors integrate physical, psychological, social, cultural and existential factors, utilizing the knowledge and trust engendered by repeated visits. They do so by promoting health, preventing disease, providing cures, care, or palliation and promoting patient empowerment and self-management. This will likely become all the more important, since we are witnessing a global demographic shift and family doctors will be responsible for and involved in caring for a growing population of older patients. This book is intended for family medicine trainees and professionals, but can also be a useful tool for geriatricians, helping them to better understand some features of primary care and to more fruitfully interact with family doctors.
Written by international experts, this book presents chapters that cover common geriatric conditions including dementia, depression, delirium, falls, polypharmacy, incontinence, immobility, and medication-related issues, as well as neurological, cardiovascular, and endocrine diseases associated with old age. The book also discusses various aspects of ambulatory, residential, and palliative care for the elderly, in addition to ethical aspects of old age care, advance care planning and living wills. Geriatric medicine is a rapidly growing field in internal medicine. The majority of elderly people now live in developing countries, where there is an urgent need to up-skill healthcare professionals. By presenting problems as they arise and then discussing how to solve them, this book offers a valuable resource for all physicians interested in the care of older people.
Society, as a whole is getting older. Thanks to the extraordinary advances in technology and medicine, humans are now living longer than ever before, and are shifting the demographic make-up on a worldwide scale. As a result, more and more of us are living and engaging with an aging population in both our personal and professional lives, and there's a heightened demand for concrete research and advice on how to effectively provide care for this growing demographic. The Care of the Older brings together some of today's most experienced geriatric researchers to provide concrete answers for care providers of all kinds-doctors, nurses, therapists, nursing home workers, and spouses and children of elderly-who are spending more and more time working with our aging population.The Care for the Older Person is broken up into 23 chapters written by an esteemed group of doctors and researchers, each covering a different aspect of elder care.
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction A New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Winner of the WSU AOS Bonner Book Award Winner of the 2022 At Home With Growing Older Impact Award As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."
