Nursing interventions and hospitalization risks for older patients

Hospitalization of Older People

Hospitals as Recovery Institutions

Hospitals are designed to be places of caring and nurturing with an emphasis on the physical healing and recovery of the patient. Typically - and as in their day-to-day living situations - special care is mandatory for senior citizens if inherent risks are to be reduced and/or avoided.

With the largest percentage - in recorded history - of the population nearing senior age, the inherent and controllable factors to the dangers of hospitalization must be dealt with - and soon.

The focus of this paper is to delve into some the issues facing aging patients and how the day-to-day role and interaction of a nurse can impact that risk.

Decline - Physical

Decline is a key problem facing older patients and the hospitalization experience often accelerates the problem. Being in a bed for long periods places the elderly at risk for decubitus growth, respiratory diseases such as bronchial infections or deadly pneumonia, and psychological decline. Well meaning enough, hospitals often ignore the special needs of such patients. Offering them foods to which they are unaccustomed, allowing long periods of bedfast inactivity, and delaying critical physical therapy are all factors which can quickly contribute to their rapid decline and even death.

Decline - Cognitive

Memory problems, confusion, dementia, situational hallucinations, and the reduction in mental coping skills are all inherent in placing older people into an institutional setting where the patient may not have the level of comfort and sense of safety they may have at home.

Nursing Interventions

The nurse is the first line of defense in caring for the patient; senior patients benefit from nurses who have a high degree of empathy for the patient's needs and experiences.

In one hospital system - the Cabell Huntington Medical - nurses and nurse practitioners "walk through the experience of what it's like to be a senior... we have goggles that mimic sight deficits. We use ear plugs, and ways to mimic the tactile changes elderly patients go through. We'll immobilize people, to show what it would be like if they had a stroke, and then ask them to do tasks. It makes them more sensitive to seniors' needs."

In Great Britain, nursing care follows a holistic approach to guiding the aging patient through the hospital stay and into 'step down', cottage hospitals, and community recovery centers. Through an empathetic and geriatric skill set, the geriatric nurse can thereby decrease her ultimate workload while maintaining a higher quality of life for the hospitalized patient.

Summary

Aging is no respecter of persons, countries, or races.

We all age. As a graying generation of millions of 'baby boomers' approach the golden years, medical care must shift much of its focus to the particular needs of this group.

Unlike the marketing and sales industries, targeting the aging is not a matter of newer or trendier services and products, but rather a system of pedantic knowledge and consistent research into the needs and quality of life requirements for the aging patient; a system each of us will be thankful for at some point in our lives.