Every medical care provider wants to do the right thing. The challenge in care of
older persons is that the “right” thing is often unclear. Older patients have extraordinary
physiological, functional, and prognostic diversity, and this means that one-size-fits-all
protocols and algorithms have far less utility than they do for younger populations.
Older patients rarely, if ever, have just 1 medical problem; so research findings
may be difficult to generalize to the patient in front of you. Furthermore, for many
patient groups—long-term care residents being a prime example—research is so limited
that the “evidence base” consists largely of “expert opinion.” On top of these challenges
is that, in comparison to younger populations, older patients are more likely to suffer
adverse consequences from both action and inaction.
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Footnotes
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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© 2022 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
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Access this article on ScienceDirectRelated Podcast
June 15, 2022
June 2022 Issue: Drug Prescribing Dilemmas in Geriatric Medicine
Host: Dr. Karl Steinberg. Featuring Dr. Philip Sloane, Dr. Mallory Brown, special guest: Josh Niznik, PharmD. Recorded on May 25, 2022.
https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/download/trnufq/JOTG-2022-06-22_mixdown.mp3
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