Geriatric nursing generally refers to nursing pertaining to care of older adults. Geriatric nurses work in organizations such as acute care hospitals, rehabilitation centers, nursing homes and retirement homes. It provides information about the key factors that affect the health of older adults as they are more likely to have one or more chronic health conditions. Older patients require more health care services than younger ones. It is important that all the nurses need to have specialized knowledge about older adults.
Evaluation is very important in an older patient, as the illnesses and the symptoms related to the disease seem to be quite much different from younger ones. It is very true to say that extensive knowledge and skills are required for the nurses to take care of older people. One cannot deny the fact that one third of all hospitalized patients are older adults. Thus, there is an urgent need for nurses with more geriatric understanding.
Unfortunately, due to lack of knowledge about the care of older people among the teachers, students and nursing program graduates, it results in insufficient evaluation skills, which further leads to missed diagnosis, treatments that can harm rather than heal. Other factors are also responsible for the reluctance among the nurses to take care of older patients. These factors include preference to work in pediatrics, labor, delivery and ICU.
Though certain nursing programs in US, Canada and in many other countries are trying to improve the situation by providing proper geriatric education to the nurses, yet the attitudinal changes seem to hinder them. These attitudinal changes are due to fear of older people. Some nurses even state that they are unable to implement what they have learnt in their nursing programs with the reality settings.
When it comes to geriatric nurses, they can learn the positive aspects of caring for the elder people. They should make a close affection with the patients by learning their stories. These nurses should be taught how to balance work and stress simultaneously. It is also important to reduce their fearful and the negative attitude about the geriatric nursing.
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