Show Notes
In this episode of GEMCast, host Dr. Christina Shenvi is joined by Dr. James Van Oppen, emergency physician and frailty expert at the University of Sheffield, to discuss the rising importance of frailty in emergency medicine. Frailty, defined as the loss of physiological resilience, is both common and clinically significant for older adults presenting to the emergency department (ED). The two discuss what frailty means, how it can be identified, and how to approach ED assessment and management in a frail patient, emphasizing the value of person-centred care. Furthermore, they highlight recent studies regarding frailty, which can be found in the resources below, and discuss the need for system-wide changes to support frailty care.
Alongside his work as an emergency physician and clinical lecturer, Dr. van Oppen is the chair of the geriatric emergency medicine section of the European Society of Emergency Medicine. Tune in to this episode to expand your understanding of frailty and hear some practical tips to improve your clinical practice.
More from GEMCAST
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Dr. Danya Khoujah joins GEMCast host Dr. Christina to dive into the first clinical practice guideline in the Geriatric Emergency Department (GED) Guidelines 2.0, which is dedicated to delirium. Delirium is a clinical syndrome characterised by acute and fluctuating disturbances of attention, awareness, perception or consciousness and it commonly affects older adults presenting to the ED. However, it is often missed, which has significant impacts on mortality and functional status of older patients. Khoujah is an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at AdventHealth Tampa in Florida, and host of GEDC’s expert-panel webinars. She is part of the multidisciplinary team that created this GRADE-based clinical guideline, and in this episode, she talks through the development and recommendations arising from the guideline.
In this GEMCast episode host Dr. Christina Shenvi is joined by Dr. Meredith Busman, Director of Observation Medicine at Corewell Health West in Grand Rapids Michigan, Program Director for the Observation Medicine Fellowship at Emergency Care Specialists, and co-chair of the ACEP Accelerate Observation Medicine: Science and Solutions conference. Observation medicine is an outpatient service that encompasses rapid treatment, assessment, and reassessment of select patients with the hopes of avoiding admission. Learn more about this new and rapidly developing subspecialty of emergency medicine, how ED-directed observation units function, and how they are particularly beneficial for older patients or those with dementia.