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Emergency Medicine

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Geriatrics for Specialists

Abstract

The emergency department (ED) provides acute care to America’s ill and injured; yet, the specifics of emergency care delivery are rapidly evolving as our nation ages and its health system changes. The growing numbers of older adults requiring emergent care is disrupting business as usual for our nation’s EDs. Today’s ED model of care, design, and operations are based on principles from 1962. Solutions for improving elder ED care range from enhanced geriatric training for ED staff, to providing specialized elder ED services, to the physical redesign of existing EDs with sections dedicated to elder patients. To facilitate enhanced geriatric ED care, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Geriatrics Society, and the Emergency Nurses Association have collaborated on unprecedented joint recommendations for targeted elder ED improvements. In this chapter we will discuss older adults as a special ED population, with unique needs, and detail specific topics in ED elder care. Finally we discuss how the current ED model of care can shift to better fit the demands from the growing number and complexity of older adults in the ED.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Section of Emergency Medicine, and Section of Geriatrics & Palliative Care, University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences, 5841 S. Maryland Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Teresita M. Hogan MD

  2. Department of Medicine, Section of Emergency Medicine, University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences, 5841 S. Maryland Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Thomas Spiegel MD, MBA, MS

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  1. Teresita M. Hogan MD
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Correspondence to Teresita M. Hogan MD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    John R. Burton

  2. Blanton Eye Institute, Houston Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA

    Andrew G. Lee

  3. Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology Home Instead Center for Successful Aging Department of Internal Medicine, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

    Jane F. Potter

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Hogan, T.M., Spiegel, T. (2017). Emergency Medicine. In: Burton, J., Lee, A., Potter, J. (eds) Geriatrics for Specialists. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31831-8_11

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