geriatrics patients care on pre hospital period

[Dima]

Hey everybody. I am a student, i am from latvia, and now I am writing my diploma on the topic about geriatrics patient care on pre hospital period. Could someone help me, and tell about how often in your country your geriatric patients call you, and what the most problems do they have. Maybe you have some materials what I could use in my work, maybe some statistics about your country.

[MariB]

Percentage wise our calls our 60% geriatric. Usually shortness of breath, not feeling "quite right , dizziness, chest pain, stroke like symptoms.

Usually, to tell you the truth, the ones "not feeling quite right " make me a bit more on high alert than others

[island emt]

as Mari said, population wise, we are getting to the boomer generation which is a large segment of the living population. As this large group ages past 60 they will become our greatest prehospital care patient load.multiple co-morbidities and a generation that has lead a hard life will increase the demands on emergency services for the next ten to fifteen years.

We are already in the 60-70% range on our patient load ,although Maine has the oldest population in the country per capita according to the US Census 2010 edition.

We are becoming a retirement home for many.

It is a collection of diseases we treat in the elderly, with many of them having many different chronic illnesses to be treated.

They will often not call 911 until it is late in the onset of symptoms, and don't want to be a burden to us.

I will leave it now as I'm growing close to being "one of those old retired fogies.

Good luck with your studies

[MikeEMT]

Hey everybody. I am a student, i am from latvia, and now I am writing my diploma on the topic about geriatrics patient care on pre hospital period. Could someone help me, and tell about how often in your country your geriatric patients call you, and what the most problems do they have. Maybe you have some materials what I could use in my work, maybe some statistics about your country.

I would say probably 75% of my calls involve Geriatric patients. Of those I probably respond to some type of care facility probably 80% of the time. You don't really understand how many "old people" are around until you start responding for them.

It can be fun or frustrating to deal with them. I have had geriatric patients that were fun and talkative and I have had ones that cursed, were rude and made the drunk, belligerent college kids look tame in comparison. I have also had patients who were truly sick and tested my skills as an EMT and others who confided to me they were just lonely.

[Arctickat]

GEMS is a great course and I would highly advise it to anyone who deals with geriatrics regularly.

http://www.gemssite.com/