Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
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Observational Study
Relationship between universal health outcome priorities and willingness to take medication for primary prevention of myocardial infarction.
To determine how well universal health outcome priorities represent individuals' preferences in specific clinical situations. ⋯ Universal health outcome priorities only modestly identified older persons who would be unwilling to take a medication for primary prevention of myocardial infarction that causes adverse effects. Although tools that are the most general in their assessment of priorities have the benefit of being applicable across the widest range of scenarios, tools with greater specificity may be necessary to inform individual treatment decisions.
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To present the validation study of the European Portuguese version of the Family Confusion Assessment Method (FAM-CAM) and to assess the level of psychological distress in families and caregivers of elderly hospitalized adults with delirium. ⋯ These preliminary results suggest that FAM-CAM is a sensitive screening tool for family detection of delirium in elderly hospitalized adults. The high level of psychological distress found corroborated previous studies. Future studies with larger samples will be needed for further validation and to allow the analysis of other psychometric properties.
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Older adults account for a large and growing segment of the emergency department (ED) population. They are often admitted to the hospital for nonurgent conditions such as dementia, impaired functional status, and gait instability. The aims of this geriatric ED innovations (GEDI) project were to develop GEDI nurse liaisons by training ED nurses in geriatric assessment and care coordination skills, describe characteristics of patients that these GEDI nurse liaisons see, and measure the admission rate of these patients. ⋯ The admission rate for GEDI patients was 44.9% (95% CI = 40.1-49.7), compared with 60.0% (95% CI = 58.8-61.2) non-GEDI. ED nurses undergoing a 3-month training program can develop geriatric-specific assessment skills. Implementation of these skills in the ED may be associated with fewer admissions of older adults.