Critical care is a component of acute care, and it aims to treat patients who require high or constant levels of monitoring and support. These patients are often in life threatening positions, and are cared for in Critical Care Units (CCUs). Patients who enter critical care can be split into two groups, planned and unplanned admissions. A planned admission may be a patient undergoing an intricate elective surgery who requires one to one monitoring peri-operatively. Unplanned admissions can be further divided into patients entering hospital in a critical condition (an example would be severe trauma) and those whose condition deteriorates into a critical state after admission (an example would be developing severe sepsis after an operation).
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Eardly stated, a lack of bed availability is often the limiting factor in how many operations can be undertaken. The media and the NHS often use the phrase ‘delayed transfers of care’ to explain the lack of beds, simply meaning that they cannot safely discharge a patient so they remain in hospital, occupying a bed. In 2015-2016, patients in Wales accumulated over 145 663 hours spent waiting for discharge in critical care unit beds, which is the equivalent of approximately 17 beds in one year. So would limiting the elderly’s access to critical care have a significant impact upon delayed transfers of care? According to a joint report from the Department of Health and National Audit Office, 85% of patients who experienced a delayed transfer of care were aged 65 years or older. One could conclude from this information that if fewer elderly patients entered critical care, there would be a disproportionately large reduction in delayed transfers of …show more content…
Part of the reason for this culture of ageism is confusion between the terms ‘elderly’ and ‘frailty’. When people decide a particular patient is too old to benefit from treatment, what they really mean is that patient is too frail to benefit from treatment. Frailty is a vulnerability due to health issues such as dementia, and while the likelihood of this increases as a patient grows old, we are mistaken to use the terms
Eardly stated, a lack of bed availability is often the limiting factor in how many operations can be undertaken. The media and the NHS often use the phrase ‘delayed transfers of care’ to explain the lack of beds, simply meaning that they cannot safely discharge a patient so they remain in hospital, occupying a bed. In 2015-2016, patients in Wales accumulated over 145 663 hours spent waiting for discharge in critical care unit beds, which is the equivalent of approximately 17 beds in one year. So would limiting the elderly’s access to critical care have a significant impact upon delayed transfers of care? According to a joint report from the Department of Health and National Audit Office, 85% of patients who experienced a delayed transfer of care were aged 65 years or older. One could conclude from this information that if fewer elderly patients entered critical care, there would be a disproportionately large reduction in delayed transfers of …show more content…
Part of the reason for this culture of ageism is confusion between the terms ‘elderly’ and ‘frailty’. When people decide a particular patient is too old to benefit from treatment, what they really mean is that patient is too frail to benefit from treatment. Frailty is a vulnerability due to health issues such as dementia, and while the likelihood of this increases as a patient grows old, we are mistaken to use the terms