The Senior-Friendly ED
The senior friendly ED isn’t a place – rather, it’s a group of policies, protocols, and procedures that are implemented by an interdisciplinary team working together for senior-friendly care. In this section, you’ll find information relating to small steps that can make a big impact in the ED. In the resources section, look for downloads of policies, screening tools, and QI tools for use in your ED.
Profile of an Occupational Therapist
Seema Zerafa got involved with the Senior-Friendly ED initiative at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto when it was decided that a physiotherapist specialized in geriatric care was needed in the ED. Beca...Read More
Profile of a Social Worker
The first time Rebecca Detje heard about geriatric emergency medicine was when she was working in the in-patient unit. She started receiving patients from the ED with incredible GEM nurse notes. “Tho...Read More
Screening Tools for High-Risk Older Adults: Which To Choose?
Part of the role of the emergency department is risk stratification. Like for acute coronary syndrome, TIA, pulmonary embolism, frail older adults can be screened in the ED. Not only they can be scre...Read More
Screening Tools for Delirium, Dementia and Functional Decline
A number of tools can be added to the ED work flow to better identify older patients with important conditions that will make a difference to their care in the ED, their care if admitted, and appropr...Read More
An Approach to Using an Inter-disciplinary Geriatric Assessment Team in the ED
A Rationale for a “Hold Overnight” Policy for Complex Older Patients Elderly patients often have non-specific presentations that raise complex medical and psychosocial questions relating to etiology ...Read More
Starting Senior-Friendly Change
How did this idea of a senior-friendly emergency department get started? DON: An awareness that older patients are part of the core business of EDs – the three main groups that MDs/hospitals have alw...Read More
Nurse-Led Geriatric Case Management – the GEM Nurse Role
For more about GEM, visit the Regional Geriatric Program of Toronto’s Geriatric Emergency Management website. This post is modified from material provided by the Regional Geriatric Programme of...Read More
Just the Basics: Policies, Procedures & Protocols
Here is a list of potential improvements you could make in any ED to make it more senior-friendly. Start with the easy ones (on no budget) and progress from there. Where there are examples on this si...Read More
Just the Basics: Physical Environment & Equipment
Here is a checklist of basic changes and enhancements that can be done with minimal expenditure or changes. The easy ones are first; the harder, more expensive ones are later Equipment and Supplies E...Read More
Policies, Procedures and Protocols
To read more about or view the complete Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines please visit: https://www.acep.org/geriedguidelines/ In order to facilitate elderly care in the Emergency department,...Read More
Staffing the Senior-Friendly ED
Staffing a senior-friendly ED means, in fact, building an interdisciplinary team. The guidelines state “The geriatric ED Staff and administration provides a multi-disciplinary team of care prov...Read More
Equipment and Supplies in the Senior-Friendly ED
A senior-friendly emergency department may not look much different from any other ED. It is certainly true that the core of a senior-friendly ED is the people and processes. However, there are a few ...Read More
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