AGE – Structured Geriatric Assessment: A Quality Improvement Project in the Internal Medicine Service
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24950/rspmi/O162/16/2017Keywords:
Aged, Geriatric Assessment, Hospital Departments, Internal Medicine, Quality ImprovementAbstract
Introduction: Hospitalization is an opportunity to assess in a
structured way the vulnerability of elderly patients. The authors
present the AGE project for Geriatric Structured Assessment,
developed in an Internal Medicine Service of Porto
Hospital Center.
Methods: The AGE project was characterized by the application
of a vulnerability screening scale (VES-13) to all
hospitalized elderly patients followed by a quality indicator
checklist. These quality indicators were selected from the
consensus document Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders-3
(ACOVE-3), applied to this reality and supported by assessment
tools such as the Mini-Cog and the Mini Mental State
Examination (MMSE). In a second phase of the project leaflets
related to common problems in home care of vulnerable
elders were developed with the nursing teams for teaching
the patient and/or caregiver. Likewise, we have included a
checklist of medical discharge conditions, one for professionals
and another for the patient.
Results: The authors present the first quarter results of the
project implementation, which included 543 elderly patients.
The VES-13 scale was applied to 300 of these patients ant
237 (79.0%) of them were identified as vulnerable elderly
patients. Eighty tree patients (35.0%) were screened for dementia
and 24 (52.2%) new cases of suspected dementia
were identified.
Conclusion:The authors conclude that the AGE project is a
strategy for the quality improvement in hospitalized geriatric
patients changing the behavior of the health care team.
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