A simulated skylight in the new geriatric emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital is intended to help patients with end-of-the-day agitation and confusion.
(OK... I may have substituted the picture...)
Posted on 04/10/2012 7:15:32 AM PDT by Haiku Guy
There were no beeping machines or blinking lights or scurrying medical residents. A volunteer circulated among the patients like a flight attendant, making soothing conversation and offering reading glasses, Sudoku puzzles and hearing aids. Above them, an artificial sun shined through a skylight imprinted with a photographic rendering of a robin’s-egg-blue sky, puffy clouds and leafy trees.
Ms. Spielberger, who is in her 80s, was even getting into the spirit of the place, despite her unnerving condition. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Everything here is wonderful.”
Yet this was an emergency room, one specifically designed for the elderly, part of a growing trend of hospitals’ trying to cater to the medical needs and sensibilities of aging baby boomers and their parents. Mount Sinai opened its geriatric emergency department, or geri-ed, two months ago, modeling it in part after one at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson, N.J., which opened in 2009.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Of course, under Obamacare, te primary medical need of the elderly will to be to die quickly and cheaply.
A simulated skylight in the new geriatric emergency room at Mount Sinai Hospital is intended to help patients with end-of-the-day agitation and confusion.
(OK... I may have substituted the picture...)
Geriatric medicine is one of the hardest practices in my opinion - you have elderly folks who may or may not be able to communicate well what is going on, you usually have multiple issues/conditions/system failures to deal with & frankly, some you treat, others you may not. The entire patient, mental & physical status, needs to be considered. I say this after taking care of an 80+ yo old & from dealing with elderly parents with multiple issues going on. It’s very difficult. This ER for the elderly sounds wonderful.
However, I knew an elderly gentleman who had a wife with many problems before she died. They went to the hospital one weekend and she ended up sharing a room with someone who had very loud visitors with very bad language. The woman was very uncomfortable in the situation and her husband really didn't want to leave her there. Ahh, diversity.
Anyway, I think it would be nice to have a quieter place for the elderly; but, since I know how people are now treated in the UK and Obamacare is the same system, I can see this as someplace where the elderly can't even get a drink of water and no one will be aware of it.
When I first saw the thread I immediately thought of Dick Van Patten escorting Edward Robinson back to the Obamacare room.
Sounds like Albert Brooks' vision of the afterlife. If I were 88 yrs old and woke up in a place like this, I'd think I'd be a little freaked out.
Soylent green is people!
The New York Times, Satan's personal newspaper, paints a lovely picture of a dystopian future.
This is eerily like the death rooms set up for the elderly in some dystopian novel I once read.
You may be right. But I just don't trust them.
Medicine has gotten too conflicted. The interests of the patient are too often over-ridden by other concerns, such as cost and convenience. Obamacare will make this exponentially worse.
I agree that Obamacare will make everything worse, especially for the elderly.
I have found that most elderly need an advocate .... a strong advocate with them when they go to the doctor and especially the ER. The advocate needs to do their homework & be “up” on what the issues are with the person they are advocating for. The elderly tend to ‘take’ whatever the doc says & not question anything ..... a person who can discuss and question can make a huge difference in the care that is rendered ..... lesson learned from hard experience. Most doctors will listen ... a few are jerks and won’t. I fired two docs before I found one that would listen, discuss & that I felt would do what was in my person’s best interest.
That was the first thing that came to my mind.
Great if Sifi had to predict the future...why did it need to be the most crappy hellish totalitarian part of the predicted future?!....
I wanted FTL travel to other planets and my flying car
Instead is seems we are headed to government provided, government encouraged, death & suicide chambers....
The world is headed right down the Barackhole
Sounds a leeetle creepy to me.
Ah, Soylent green.
Soylent green is people.
People Serving People...
When the elderly are starting to enter “the zone” where they could become victims of immoral government, medical and funeral practices, it is time to consider “The Mexican Solution.”
That is, there is an increasing number of places in Mexico designed to be comfortable and natural accommodations for elderly Americans. Medical care is a lot less expensive, there is a much better ratio of patients to doctors, nurses and other health care workers, and importantly, the Mexican tradition is to care for their elderly at home, and to respect the elderly.
This means no euthanasia, no unnecessary surgeries, no schemes to drain family wealth, medicines and surgeries are still quality, but a lot less expensive. There are no government bureaucrats demanding things from the family, or legal fights over someone who is incapacitated, etc.
It does, however, mean that they and other family members must have those filthy, intrusive passports to stay out of the US any great length of time. Which means about six months lead time before you can escape.
In exchange, you get a natural life, good and respectful medical care, and decent death with dignity, a peaceful and inexpensive funeral, that your family retain most of its wealth, all out of the control of nanny bureaucrats, lawyers and medical murderers.
Those death rooms are at places like Calvary and other hospices which practice "palliative care".
I thought that when you wrote “Mexican solution” that you meant being lined up and shot by a narco terrorist...
A couple of years ago, I had a pacemaker implanted. They kept me in overnight. My roomie was a Haitian pastor, and around dinner time, most of his flock came in for a visit and for two solid hours, they sang hymns. Not speaking a word of Creole, I wasn’t able to join in. Promptly at 2100, the end of visiting hours, they packed up and left.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.