The care of older people

Bowel care in older people.

Bowel dysfunction not only causes considerable hardship for many older people and their carers, it is also financially costly to the health service and to the individuals affected. Despite the prevalence of constipation and faecal incontinence amongst, for example, older people in institutionalised settings, both conditions are often iatrogenic and entirely preventable. One reason why these con...

Eye care for older people

the global trend Worldwide, people are now living longer and birth rates are declining; older people are therefore making up an ever greater proportion of the world’s population. This means that the number of older people is increasing very rapidly compared to the overall growth of the global population. By 2025, there will be twice as many older people worldwide as there were in 2000 (an incre...

Health care for older people.

Achieving Integrated Care for Older People: What Kind of Ship?; Comment on “Achieving Integrated Care for Older People: Shuffling the Deckchairs or Making the System Watertight for the Future?”

This paper considers an implication of the idea that proposals for integrated care for older people should start from a focus on the patient, consider co-production solutions to the problems of care fragmentation, and be at a system-wide, cross-organisational level. It follows that the analysis, design and therefore evaluation of integrated care projects should be based upon the journeys which ...

Proactive care of older people undergoing surgery

The number of older patients undergoing surgery is increasing due to changing demographics, surgical and anaesthetic advances and shifts in patient expectations of healthcare. The benefits of surgery in older people are well documented and include symptom control and increased life expectancy. However, older surgical patients present not only with the index pathology requiring surgery but with ...