Elderly Care Medicine Lecture Notes 8th Edition PDF
15.15 MB PDF
Preface
Unless you are planning to be a paediatrician or an obstetrician, this book is for you. 2011 was the year that the world population topped 7 billion (UN). Whilst population growth is still very rapid in some areas, in industrialized countries it is the ageing of the population that is having most effect on health and social needs. Because of the size of their populations, the greatest numbers of old people already live in China and India. By the end of the century it is estimated that the world population will be falling so the challenges of ageing will dominate worldwide.
Whatever career choice you make, with a few exceptions, the patients you look after during your career will be increasingly elderly and increasingly frail. Even in surgical specialties the majority of patients are old. A good understanding of the basics of managing this group with their fragile homeostatic mechanisms, multiple diseases and drugs, high prevalence of dementia and risk of delirium will make a difference to the outcome for your patient. Knowledge of the ways in which the multidisciplinary team can work with the patient and family and a grasp of the complexities of the social care system will also help you to put together the best package of care for an older person. This will reduce their length of stay in hospital, the risks of hospitalization and money wasted on inefficient care.
In the community, the limited time available for a GP consultation makes good medical management of older people with complex health problems difficult to achieve. If a specialist opinion is needed, frail older people are not easily managed by single-organ specialists, but elderly care medicine as a specialty remains poorly developed in much of Europe and North America. In the UK it is recognized that frail old people are the greatest users of the NHS and geriatric medicine is now the biggest specialty within the Royal College of Physicians. However, academic departments of medicine for the elderly have been in decline and the medicine of old age is often taught by nonspecialists as an integrated part of medicine in the life cycle. This has the advantage that ageing is seen in the context of human development, but the time allocated to older people is not proportionate to what the student doctor will need to know as soon as they are qualified.
If you are still not convinced that a grasp of medicine for the elderly is essential, have a look at the medical or surgical ‘take’ list for the hospital where you are working. At Addenbrooke’s the average age of the patients admitted on the medical take sometimes exceeds 75 years and the average age of the patients under the physicians here who specialize in elderly care is 86 years.
This book is aimed at medical students and junior doctors who may have had relatively little specialist teaching about older people. Therefore since the last edition, the content has been expanded as well as updated, particularly the chapters on dementia, stroke, falls and ethical issues. We hope that it is written in an approachable manner which would make it accessible to nurses and allied health professionals. The accompanying website gives key points for revision and more details particularly about health care provision, dementia and stroke. It also forms an initial refresher for trainees approaching their specialty examination to identify gaps in knowledge for appropriate supplementation from longer textbooks and papers.
You will need to learn the basics of medicine for the elderly – we are hoping to make it easier and to convince you that medicine for older people is interesting, varied and challenging. There is great scope for clinical acumen and decision making as the complexity of the patients makes guideline driven medicine less relevant. Over recent years, geriatricians have expanded into orthopaedics, stroke medicine, acute medicine and community services and there is now demand for input into general surgery. As other specialties contract, a career in medicine for the elderly is well worth considering.
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lecture notes elderly care medicine pdf
lecture notes elderly care medicine 8th edition
lecture notes elderly care medicine 8th edition pdf
lecture notes elderly care medicine 8th edition pdf free download
lecture notes elderly care medicine 8th edition free download
