Mouthpiece: Elderly deserve more respect

HAVE you been a patient in a hospital recently or perhaps a visitor? Unless you were in a maternity unit or children's ward, you can't have failed to notice that most patients are over retirement age.

In fact, most hospitals have some wards dedicated to older adults. Whether these are still called geriatric wards or have been re-branded as "Medicine for the Elderly" or some such label, they only contain a small proportion of those over 65 years who are in hospital. How would you like to be on a geriatric ward? Given that most older adults are not in such wards, do we really need them?

It is no surprise that many hospitals in England have done away with geriatric wards. One reason is that due to prevailing stigmatisation they can turn into "geriatric ghettos", with patients receiving a second-class service.

The MRI scanner has only one slot, who are they going to take: a cancer ward patient or someone from the geriatric ward? You are thinking of a career in nursing, where will you choose: a respiratory ward or a geriatric ward? Yet cancer wards and respiratory wards have high proportions of older adults. It is not too difficult to design a service where doctors and other health professionals with specialist skills in looking after older adults work alongside colleagues in other disciplines in the same wards.

So is there anyone who might benefit from a geriatric ward? Perhaps people with delirium and dementia who need specially-designed environments.

Next Saturday, the British Geriatrics Society, which represents doctors and other professionals who look after older adults, is holding an "Age of Enlightenment" event at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.

We want to know how you think health services should be designed for older adults. To participate, register online at www.bgs.org.uk or contact Mark Stewart on 020-7608 1369

John Starr is chairman of the British Geriatrics Society Organising Committee for the Age of Enlightenment