Geriatric Palliative Care

The growing geriatric population in the United States has created an increasing need for palliative medicine services across the range of medical and surgical specialties. Yet, palliative medicine lacks the resources to carry such a workload itself. Geriatric Palliative Care addresses this need by encouraging individual specialties to "own" the management of elderly with the same vigor as they "own" other key management competencies within their specialty.This clinically focused and highly practical handbook, which compliments the more comprehensive text Geriatric Palliative Care by Sean Morrison and Diane Meier (Oxford University Press, 2003), encourages this process of learning and ownership across many medical specialties. Designed to be readable and easilyaccessible to a range of health care providers, Geriatric Palliative Care outlines specific strategies for caring for specific palliative care issues common in elderly patients. The handbook also provides evidence based advice for helping patients, relatives, and staff cope with such issues as polypharmacy, dementia and consent, multiple pathologies, home care, elderly caregivers, and supporting the elderly in the place where they would like to be.

Any member of the health care team who is engaging with geriatric patients in need of palliative care would benefit from having this guide on the bookshelf., This is a well-written, easy-to-read book. It covers many topics at a very basic level, making it an exceptional reference for students, trainees, and generalists. There are many other books specific to palliative care and to geriatrics, but none that blend the two., I think this book provides a good coverage and it is very practical and useable. Given that we are encountering an increasing number of older adults in palliative care, this would be a useful book to have on the shelf for quick day-to-day reference, providing the geriatric perspective on the problems we encounter... Palliative Care Book of the Month

Emily Chai, M.D., is Associate Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.Diane Meier, MD, FACP, is Professor of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.Jane Morris, MS, RN, ACHPN, is the Clinical Coordinator for Palliative Care at New York Hospital, Queens, New York.Suzanne Goldhirsch, MA, MsED, is a Program Coordinator for Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.