Hospitals are very bad for elderly patients according to recent studies.
Thirty-three percent of patients over 70 and 50+% of those over 85 are more disabled when they leave than when they arrived according to research published in JAMA.
This is hospitalization-associated disability and can occur even when the event which put them in the hospital is cured.
What elderly need most is to eat well, exercise daily, and get plenty of sleep.
Anyone who has ever been in a hospital knows that patients are awoken in the night to take vitals, tied down to beds with IVs, and given food the average cat wouldn’t eat.
Is it any wonder they do badly and so many who were living on their own before entering a hospital go to skilled nursing facilities when they leave, unable to care for themselves ever again?
Doctors' Goals Should be to Treat Less, Rather Than More.
The main goal of doctors treating the elderly should be the opposite of that for treating kids and younger people who usually benefit from bed rest and hospital care.
The elderly, on the other hand, should be released as soon as possible, fed in a room with others, not from a tray in bed, and left to sleep through the night.
They should also be encouraged to walk as much as possible rather than lie in bed even if this means the inconvenience to staff of disconnecting IVs, some of which wouldn’t be needed it the patient exercised and ate decent food.
Simply put, bed rest is BAD for the elderly and just a week confined to bed can do permanent damage which a younger person could simply shake off in a few days at home.
Some hospitals have taken notice of the fact that less care is probably best for the elderly and have set aside special elder care sections where the special needs of elderly patients are addressed.
Ignorance isn't bliss; it's just ignorance.
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