Well first it is a required class for all students. Over the last decade more and more schools are requiring students to take such a class (Hopkins required this before the suggestion was made). Secondly, this age group will be the largest health care consumer in the United States. The Baby Boomer population will start to reach the age of 85 in the year 2020. Previously, elderly individuals were considered to be anyone 65 years + (hence the retirement age) because people were only living into their late 60s and early 70s. With an increase in medical technology and preventative measures, people who once needed to access services for chronic disease management at the age of 65 are not accessing those services today until the age of 80-85.
One of the biggest things our professor clarified in our first class is that people between the age of 65-85 are not the old people that everyone envisions. In fact, many people are more active at this point in their lives compared to their younger years. Umm hello - my grandmother just turned 80 and still plays several hours of tennis a DAY on top of walking the dog. Our professor showed us a video of a sassy 87 year old on the first day of class ... things start to get really good at 1:40.
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| This is not the sassy lady in said video, but she is still working her stuff. Look at those legs!! |
Saw this today too:
ReplyDeletehttp://jezebel.com/5985220/101+year+old-man-runs-marathon-for-womens-rights
But yesterday we also learned about health literacy and I was deeply concerned, especially for adults taking >1 medication and who couldn't read very well (<5th grade level), and add in decreasing vision and dementia, and lack of places to go for health information, and I get very nervous about old people taking medication. Such as those that have to open the bottle and say - "oh, that's the round blue one and I take that in the morning but I don't know what for".
They're certainly an interesting group though!
HEALTH LITERACY - ONE OF MY MOST FAVORITE TOPICS. We had to watch a video in my MPH class where the elderly patient knew why he was on antihypertensive medication. His response: "because I am to hyper" MIND BLOWING MOMENT!! And that is when I became a huge fan of the teach back method.
ReplyDeleteI just found out that Baltimore (and 5 other cities) has this really cool program called Script Your Future to help with Rx compliance issues; one of the pharmacy programs sends students out to work with the more vulnerable populations. There are some great tools on the site which help outline when/how much/why you are taking meds (only down fall is that you have to be computer literate to find them). I think there is even a service where they will send you a text/call you to remind you to take your pills.
Yay for nerdy medical chats!!
OMG we watched the same video!! And we covered the teach back method!
ReplyDeleteThat's a really sweet service, it sounds like it could really help.
yay :)