GEDI nurses care for 10,000 aging baby boomers

Описание: (1 Feb 2018) LEADIN:
With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day in the United States, hospital ERs are having to better adapt to caring for the older population.
Now medics have come up with an approach aimed at helping older patients stay out of hospital.
STORYLINE:
Dwayne Dobschuetz (dob'-shetz) navigates city streets, so his elderly patients don't have to.
He's a nurse practitioner and he makes up to four house calls a day.
Dobschuetz explains: "They don't want to be in a nursing home. They don't even want to be in a good nursing home. They want to be where they are in control."
Inside the apartment of his patient Marvin Shimp,  Dobschuetz gets down to work in a more personal setting.
These visits enable patients like Shimp to avoid having to live in special accomodation.
Shimp welcomes the visits: "By stopping to see me every so often and taking some of the readings, that I don't have to go down to the hospital sometimes."
That's the goal of a new approach in emergency medicine.
Keeping older patients out of hospital where they can become confused, and perhaps even sicker.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Dr. Scott Dresden says: "We worry about functional decline. There's an adage that a day in the hospital requires about a week of recovery. That's just from the hospitalization, not necessarily the illness that brought them there."
Hospital staff are also concerned about patients who fall, because they become disoriented in their new surroundings.
Some 100 hospitals in the United States have now opened specialist geriatric emergency departments, or trained their ER teams in geriatrics care.
Early research shows it's helping  to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions.
Dresden says: "We are trying to know them a little bit better, understand them a little better and see exactly what they need, as opposed to just opening the door and saying 'Hey you need to come into the hospital.'"
The nurses at Northwestern are called GEDIs, and not just because they are super nurses. GEDI stands for: "geriatric emergency department innovations."
The nurses screen older patients with more time and care in quieter, more comfortable rooms.
Dobschuetz was a GEDI nurse before taking on his new role of home visits at the ripe old age of 70.
He laughs as he explains: "I moved from being the oldest nurse in the emergency department to a youngster comparison to the 90-year-olds. They seem to like the little bit of white hair (gesturing to his white hair) that I have, the little that I have."
Dobschuetz believes his patients can relate to him better because of his age.

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