Geriatrics: The Family Conference

This morning Corey, Justin, and I attended a family conference with Dr. K, Dr. Hall (the psychologist), a social worker, and the patient (an 82-year-old lady) and her nephew. Dr. K and Dr. Hall each presented their findings which showed that the patient's cognitive function was slowly declining, typical of early Alzheimer's. Now we were told that many patients become angry when they heard the "A" word, but this lady was very accepting of the diagnosis. "I knew something was wrong," she said, and the fact that she had the insight to tell that she was losing her memory was a positive sign that we had caught this early. So the family conference proceeded as perfectly as one can imagine. The patient has a supportive extended family, so I feel confident she'll be in good hands.

Because we finished at 10:45 a.m., there was time to call Dr. JH (one of the other geriatrics attendings) and ask her which patients she wanted us to see at our assigned assisted living center for the afternoon. She gave us six names and we headed for the center in hopes of completing rounds by 1:30 (our original meeting time). In that, we succeeded (my two patients were in their 90s and slightly demented but very friendly). Dr. JH listened as we presented our patients and then we went to round on them, but there we hit some roadblocks whenever we had talkative patients. One man kept us in his room for nearly 30 minutes talking about how he cured his own Crohns' disease by "flushing out the bacteria" with supplements. *sigh* We did get out before 5:00 though =)