Dr Linda Dykes Consultant in Emergency and Interface Frailty Medicine Wye Valley NHS Trust UK (NHS), UK Leominster, England
Description: The Baby Boomers are getting old, and as they do so, are coming into increasing contact with all medical services, including EMS. And older patients are getting more complex - multiple co-morbidities and a medication list that resembles a pharmacopoeia are commonplace. Even the so-called "Geriatric Giants" have changed since they were direct described in 1965... today there are four: frailty, sarcopenia, the anorexia of ageing, and cognitive impairment. From these are derived the kind of problems we see in EMS and EM: falls, hip fractures, delirium, and increased morbidity and mortality.
This talk covers the concept of frailty, explains delirium and how it may present (it's not always a UTI!), and covers a wide range of background infromation, plus practical tips and tricks to help EMS clinicians provide better care for our senior patients, both at work and as part of wider society.
Learning Objectives:
Define the concept of frailty, describe how to use of the Rockwood Clinical Frailty Scale, and list important implications of frailty
Describe hypoactive and hyperactive delirium, and list important possible causes
Demonstrate use of on-line tools to assess the cumulative anti-cholinergic burden of a patient's medications, such as acbcalc.com, and understand why this is important.
