Aging health Archives - Better Health While Aging

5 Questions to Ask Yourself on National Healthcare Decisions Day

Since 2008, April 16th has been designated as “National Healthcare Decisions Day” (NHDD).

It’s an initiative meant to “inspire, educate and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning.”

In other words, National Healthcare Decisions Day is meant to get you to plan for your future…a future time during which you might be ill and others — most likely your family — will have to make decisions about your healthcare.

This is not a particularly unlikely scenario. Between the present-at-all-ages possibility of being in a bad accident and the increased likelihood of illness as one ages, you’d actually have to be quite lucky — or unlucky, depending on how you see it — to reach the end of your life without anyone else ever having to make a medical decision on your behalf.

Still, studies and surveys generally find that many of us have not taken the needed steps to “make our wishes known.”

And even among those who have “made their wishes known,” there’s usually more to it than they realize, and they often have skipped an important piece of the process. [Read more…]

Medications Older Adults Should Avoid or Use with Caution:
The American Geriatrics Society Beers Criteria (2019 Update)

by Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH 18 Comments

Today we’re covering a touchstone resource for geriatricians: the “Beers List” of medications that older adults should avoid or use with caution.

(Technically, it’s called “The AGS Beers Criteria® for Potentially Inappropriate Medication Use in Older Adults.” I personally think of it as the list of “risky medications” for older adults.)

If you want to know which medications older adults, in particular, should be careful with, this is the list!

Now, I have good news and bad news about the Beers criteria.

The good news is that they were just updated and revised, so the Beers Criteria published in January 2019 is about as up-to-date as you can get for this type of guideline document. (Yay!)

The bad news is that this year, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS), which has historically made the list freely available to the public on HealthinAging.org, has not released the updated information for free on its page about the Beers Criteria. (Bummer!)

Instead, they’ve posted a notice that “To access the complete AGS Beers Criteria^® and its related resources, please visit GeriatricsCareOnline.org.” From there, the article is available for purchase.

(My suggestion for those who really want the list: consider getting the handy 2019 AGS Beers Criteria® Pocketcard, which is $9.99. Or, ask your health provider to print it for you.)

I think it’s really too bad that it’s become harder for regular people to access this wonderful resource, but oh well.

Whether or not you obtain access to the full 2019 Beers Criteria, I still think it’s important for older adults and families to at least be aware that this resource exists, and to understand how it can help make the medical care of older adults safer.

You absolutely should know that experts in geriatrics and in medication safety go through a very careful process of reviewing the research on medications, and of updating this list of medications that older adults should avoid or use with caution.

So in this article, here’s what I’ll be sharing with you: [Read more…]

How to Make Hospitalization Better & Safer in Aging

by Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH 10 Comments

As you may know, hospitalization is actually somewhat risky for older adults.

This is sometimes surprising to older adults and families. After all, hospitals are supposed to be places where people who are ill or injured can get the medical supervision and services that they need, to recover and be restored to health.

Well, it’s certainly true that hospitalization is often the only way for a person to obtain more substantial care from nurses and doctors. (There actually is an alternative called Hospital at Home, but it’s not widely available.)

If you’ve broken a hip, or have developed really significant shortness of breath from pneumonia, or otherwise are too unwell to be safely treated in the outpatient setting, hospitalization is often necessary. And since aging increases one’s vulnerability to a variety of health problems, older adults get hospitalized at higher rates than younger people do.

The problem, however, is that although hospitalization is intended to help patients, we’ve also realized that it tends to stress the body and mind in many ways. This is hard on every patient, but especially affects older adults. For instance: [Read more…]

Top 10 Checklist for Better Health & Aging in 2019

by Leslie Kernisan, MD MPH 31 Comments

Do you find yourself taking stock and setting goals around the time of New Year’s?

It is indeed a great time to look back and see all that’s happened — especially the good stuff — since the previous New Year.

And although one can set goals at any time of year, the start of the calendar year is a time that seems to inspire many people to think about their health and how to thrive over the coming year.

If better health while aging is important to you, here are my top ten suggestions for the coming year. [Read more…]

End of Life Planning Made Easy Through PREPARE

by Team BHWA 8 Comments

Living wills. Advance directives. Powers of attorney for healthcare. Making your wishes known.

Many older adults have never gotten around to addressing these issues, and of those who have, many are overdue for a review.

After all, this is not something where you should “set-it-and-forget-it.” Especially not if you completed the paperwork with a lawyer years ago, and have experienced changes in your health since then.

But if you wanted to get started addressing this, you may have run into a few common hitches. The forms are often in legalese and hard to understand. And people often are sure just how to go about “making their wishes known.”

Fortunately, geriatrician Rebecca Sudore, MD, noticed this problem early in her career, and decided to do something about it.

Over the past 15 years, she developed and tested California’s first easy-to-read advance directive, then designed PREPARE, an easy online video program created to help older adults address advance care planning.

In a recent podcast episode, she and Dr. Kernisan discussed PREPARE, advance care planning, and how to make it easier for older adults to address what matters most to them when it comes to end-of-life planning.

This article will share some highlights and key points from their conversation, including:

The easy-to-read advance directives (and where you can get one)
Why advance care planning needs to include more than completing forms
How the PREPARE program helps older adults talk about what matters most
How to use PREPARE resources to help yourself or your loved ones talk about what matters and complete your planning

[Read more…]

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