After I my recent post on hospital induced delirium, people begin chatting with me, unsolicited, about their elderly parents’ hospital experiences. Admitting an aging parent to a hospital appears to instill significant anxiety and resignation in adult children. The spontaneous conversations usually focused on the ways that hospitals, despite commitment to good medical practices, cheerful … Continue reading
Filed under hospitals …
Confusion or Delirium in a Hospital or New Living Situation
Several older elders in my family have developed extreme confusion when they in the hospital or emergency room. Here’s what I learned about it. Continue reading
Better Hospital Gowns? All Ages Will Be Thrilled!
If you are like my parents, me, or people of almost any age, you HATE hospital gowns. Sometimes putting on or wearing the gowns is worse than the test or the hospital visit. If you have ever helped an aging parent or other elder get in and out of bed with one of those gowns — or take … Continue reading
Aging Parent Hospitalizations and Observation Status
Just when you think that you have settled the most significant adult child-aging parent issues — when you and your parents have spoken about medical care support, finances, and the range of their end-of-life wishes — along comes another concern to worry about, and it’s one that may be completely out of our control. We … Continue reading
Keeping Elders Out of Hospitals as Much as Possible
Anyone who has spent time with an elder parent in the hospital knows just how easy it is for one problem to be solved only to have the person discharged with different problems. This is not necessarily the fault of the medical caregivers or the hospital itself — it’s a result of a system that … Continue reading
Pets and Patients: Can Pets Help With Healing?
Ever so often a blogger, in this case me, discovers a piece of news that’s old, but so interesting and relevant. When Best Friends Can Visit, appearing in the New York Times New Old Age blog, is just such an article. This report, written by Judith Graham, describes how some hospitals and medical centers have decided … Continue reading
Aging Parent Hospitalization
I’ve written about senior parent hospitalizations several times on this blog. When a parent is hospitalized, an adult child needs energy, clarity, and attention to detail. Recently Dale Carter, over at Transition Aging Parents, wrote an excellent post about her experience when her mother was hospitalized for surgery, and she includes lots of ideas that … Continue reading
Avoiding a Return Trip to the Hospital
One out of five hospitalized Medicare patients needs to return to the hospital a second time within 30 days of their first discharge. A second hospital admission, shortly after the first, is a no-win situation for everyone concerned about an elder parent. Patients are often sicker, they are unnecessarily exposed to other hospital bacteria, and families … Continue reading
Aging Parents and Hospital Admission for Observations
When your parents go to the hospital and need to stay over night or longer, be sure the medical staff admits them as official patients and not for observation (which means that technically they are not admitted at all). People hospitalized for observation do not qualify for Medicare’s skilled nursing care benefit after leaving the hospital, and … Continue reading
Elder Parent Surgery, Part II: At UVA Hospital
My mother’s laparoscopic surgery at the University of Virginia Health System went splendidly with the best possible outcome. Part of the day’s success is due to medical skills, but it’s also due to the UVA hospital staff members who treated my mother with respect, dignity, and gentleness at every point of the day. Mom did … Continue reading
The Patient’s Checklist by Elizabeth Bailey
A patient checklist — what a terrific idea! Checklists are “in” right now. John’s Hopkins physician, Dr. Peter Pronovost focuses on checklists to reduce mistakes, reduce hospital-acquired infections, and improve patient safety in hospitals. Writer-physician Atul Gawande publicized checklists even more widely in his book, The Checklist Manifesto, describing more examples about how physicians can make … Continue reading
Art in a Hospital? Does it Help with Healing?
Read this short Detroit News article, Saint. Joseph Mercy Oakland Enhancing Hospital Environment, appearing in the paper on March 22, 2012. Not only does this hospital currently display art on its walls, but it is now seeking art to purchase or commission to become a permanent part of the new South Patient Tower, currently under construction. … Continue reading
Duplicate Discharge Orders for Elderly Seniors to Adult Child
In this day of electronic medical records, EMR’s for short, why can’t a hospital with an e-mail or fax number on file send off a copy of the discharge orders to the adult child designated by the elder parent? Given that the private sector has figured out a way to help adult children keep track … Continue reading
Epidemiologists, Disease Detecting, and Media Literacy
From time to time a small outbreak of an uncommon disease occurs — often in an unexpected location. Sometimes it’s publicized and we hear about it, but at other times the outbreak is small enough that most people only hear after the fact. Either way, many of our elderly parents, and many of us, find … Continue reading
Hospitals in Cleveland Introduce ER’s Focused on Senior Care
This Cleveland.com article, University Hospital’s Bedford, Richmond ERs Focus on Senior Care, shares important changes at yet another medical center, changes that focus on the needs of seniors when they go a hospital’s emergency facility. How wonderful that the first senior-friendly emergency room, at Holy Cross Hospital in suburban Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC … Continue reading
The Spirit Catches You: Medical and Cultural Misperceptions
For several months I’ve listed Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, as my current read. While the story describes a struggle between a refugee Hmong family with a sick child and the medical world, the book, with its emphasis on cultural assumptions and misperceptions, is well worth the attention of … Continue reading
7 Communication Techniques Made a Difference at the Hospital
I’ve observed how good communication can help a hospitalized aging parent maintain an optimistic outlook. This summer Dad was admitted to Rockingham Memorial Hospital in Harrisonburg, VA (read my blog posts from RMH last May) and to section 8G at the Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. Hospitalizations are an enormous challenge for a family, … Continue reading
Aging Parents: Chronic Disease Complications on Vacation
What to do when an aging parent becomes ill on a family vacation? With little knowledge about the quality of care in an away-from-home location, even in a place visited for years, double anxiety is the name of the game if a loved-one is taken to the hospital. We faced this issue last weekend when, just … Continue reading
Hospital Cafeterias With No Low-Sodium Options? – Low Sodium Diet, Part II
Read other Low Salt Journey installments: Senior Parents Get Started in Their 80′s: Part I, Hospital Cafeterias With No Low-Sodium Options? Part II, Making Sense of Sodium Labels and Numbers: Part III, and 5 Lessons Learned About Cutting Back on Sodium: Low-Salt Eating: Part IV. Over the past six weeks I have been in four hospital cafeterias with three different friends or family members who … Continue reading
Senior Parent Hospitalization, Report #6: Learning About Cardiac Procedures and Surgeries
My dad’s recent heart attack turned out to be treatable — still serious, but not as much as first surmised. In the process of various diagnostic physician visits, he (and we) discussed a number of procedures with his doctors including a possible cardiac catheterization. We watched this slide show, A Visual Guide to Heart Disease, at … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 