Introduction

Abstract

While making beds with a student nurse soon after she was allocated to an elderly care hospital, I remember her being close to tears because she felt that the old people were being treated like sacks of potatoes — hauled in and out of bed at the beginning and end of their day with no control over their destiny. Other students talked more positively about their experiences of elderly care, discovering that it was ‘the little things’ that made the qualitative difference to patients’ lives; little things such as dressing in their own clothes, manicuring their nails, making sure their hearing aids worked and their glasses were clean. As one student put it, in the elderly ward, the functioning hearing aid was just as much a lifeline to survival as the intravenous infusion to the postoperative patient on the acute surgical ward. On the elderly ward, the high-tech heroics were set aside and ‘the little things’ became all important.