3 Best Practices for Nurses with Elderly Patients
By Jennifer Larson, contributor
If you work in a hospital or outpatient setting that serves adults, you’ve undoubtedly encountered some elderly patients. Have you ever wondered if you’re doing everything that you can for them?
After all, you may not be a specialist in geriatric nursing—in fact, most nurses who find themselves caring for elderly patients aren’t specialists. Fortunately, you can learn some important principles about providing excellent elderly patient care from the experts.
Key strategies for nurses helping older patients
1. Recognize the complexity in elder patient care
Caring for older people is very complex, noted Tara A. Cortes, PhD, RN, executive director of the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing (HIGN) at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing in New York.
One elderly patient may have one combination of chronic medical conditions and take several different medications, while another elderly patient may have a completely different medical history, prescriptions, and needs, as well as different personal preferences.
“One 75-year-old is different from another 75-year-old,” said Cortes. “They’re different. We’re all different, and we all have different goals.”
Because every elderly adult is an individual, you must approach them with that in mind, according to Molly Brooks, RN-BC, CHPCA, the founder of Hero’s Bridge, a nonprofit that serves the needs of elderly veterans in northern Virginia.
“I always encourage nurses not to make assumptions about seniors, because the seniors come with all different abilities,” she said.
For example, don’t assume that an elderly patient is hard of hearing or suffers from cognitive impairment until you have conducted an assessment. Then you can begin to tailor the care that you are providing to meet their specific needs.
2. Let the 4Ms guide you
Cortes suggested using the key elements of the Age-Friendly Health System to guide you.
The Age-Friendly Health System initiative was created by the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), in partnership with the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA). The initiative was designed to follow evidence-based practice and align with the priorities of older adults and their caregivers.
This care framework is referred to as the 4Ms:
- What Matters: Take into account the patient’s specific health outcome goals and preferences.
- Mentation: Identify signs of depression, delirium or dementia and begin steps for treatment and management.
- Mobility: Help older adults stay mobile and maintain function by helping them move safely on a regular basis.
- Medication: Make sure that medication, if necessary, is appropriate and does not interfere with their goals, mobility or mentation. (A resource that may help is the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Beers Criteria for Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Older Adults.)
“These 4Ms guide the major areas of caring for older adults that one should keep in mind,” Cortes explains. “If you can handle those, the rest should fall into place. The rest is typical nursing care.”
3. Learn from your elderly patients
Nurses caring for elderly patients might be more focused on the immediate health concerns, which is certainly understandable. But if you have time, remember that you can learn from these people who have seen so much over the years.
“My hope, as a gerontological nurse, is that that we move, as a society, from seeing seniors as needing to be dealt with or put somewhere to treasuring them,” said Brooks.
And if you realize that you really enjoy caring for elderly adults, you might even consider specializing. Your expertise will be greatly appreciated, said Cortes, and you can benefit from the opportunity to interact with people with so much life experience.
“Caring for older people is really one of the most satisfying aspects of nursing care,” she said.
Related:
How to Communicate with Patients of All Generations
TravelNursing.com has thousands of travel nursing jobs for adult and pediatric nurses across the U.S.
APPLY TODAY to get connected with a top recruiter.