In Defense of the Frail Elderly

The American Thinker ^ | July 06, 2009 | Anthony Ughetti

[Scanian]

Our current system, although flawed, still provides the best medical care anywhere on Earth. For no population subset is this statement more true than our frail elderly.

Even the most modest towns across our nation have nursing facilities, home health agencies, and community resources available to help maintain the dignity, function, and quality of life of the frail older adult. There are organizations and niche providers such as Hospice and Meals on Wheels who work in the trenches daily with the elderly and their families to make the best of an oftentimes hopeless situation. We as a nation should be thankful to this arm of the healthcare industry, and shudder when we reflect that, if Obamacare reforms are successful, it could sound the death knell for these types of services which the frail elderly population depends upon and deserves.

I've worked for nearly twenty years in the American healthcare industry, spending most of that time in long-term care. Many patients I encounter are in the last weeks or months of their lives. The vast majority of customers I serve each day have at least some form of dementia, from those who have mild cognitive deficits to poor souls who are profoundly demented, to the point of not being able to care for themselves. Yet I, and hundreds of thousands of other healthcare workers nationwide, devote our lives to serving these residents and their families. The efforts we deliver daily touch lives and make a difference, and woe to our nation if Obama's "reforms" curtail care to this seemingly hopeless group of citizens.

Why is it important to provide care to the frail elderly? Two anecdotes can help illustrate the mindset of those who care for the elderly.

[don-o]

ping

Thought you might have a word of two about this one.

[Daisyjane69]

Thanks for posting this. I have two parents in their mid-seventies. I’m having trouble getting my contemporaries to understand what this regime has in mind.

This says it as well as anything else:

“Why is it important to provide care to the frail elderly? Two anecdotes can help illustrate the mindset of those who care for the elderly.

The first comes from an essay I encountered several years ago by Dr. Paul E. Ruskin in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In the essay, which I will paraphrase, he is instructing a class of neophyte nurses, and he presents this case study to them:

“Your next patient is a Caucasian female who appears her stated age. She cannot speak nor comprehend the spoken word. She often babbles incoherently for hours on end. She is disoriented to person, place and time, but will occasionally recognize her own name. She is often soiled and her clothes are dirty from incessant drooling. She makes no effort to care for herself and is utterly dependent upon the efforts of others. She cannot walk. She must be fed a special pureed diet and is 100% incontinent, requiring frequent bathing and changing. Several times a day, she becomes agitated for no obvious reason, and will scream loudly until someone attends to her.”

In the essay, the doctor asks his students how they would feel caring for such a person. They used words such as “frustrated, “hopeless,” “annoyed,” and “depressed.”

However, the doctor stated “I very much enjoy caring for this individual,” and as the class members looked on, he held up a picture of his six-month old daughter.

The second example comes from an advertisement from a therapy company which ran in the mid-90’s. The ad showed an adorable baby alongside an older adult, with the byline “The sun setting is no less beautiful than the sun rising.”

It bears repeating and reading the entire article you so kindly posted.

[Mrs. Don-o]

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