Hospitals

Being a hospital patient can be a disorienting and distressing experience. Routines are upended, familiarity is absent and even your clothes are missing. In fact, for many of us, our clothing plays an essential role in our unique identity. Being without our usual clothes, or being forced into uncomfortable hospital…

No one like to go to the hospital, but sometimes there’s just no choice- or is there? If you ask Dr. Bruce Leff, a geriatrician at Johns Hopkins, whatever you can do to keep seniors out of hospitals is a worthwhile effort, even if you need to set up hospital-level…

Few medical emergencies are within your control: you never know when trauma or serious illness will strike. But if you could plan ahead, you’d be wise to avoid having a cardiac arrest in a hospital on an evening or weekend. A study by the UK National Cardiac Arrest Audit mirrors similar…

In today’s financially pressured health care environment, the interests of a hospital may not always neatly align with the health and well being of a patient. This is especially true at discharge, when the hospital may face economic pressure to have the patient leave, even if the patient’s health is…

At some point you may get this call: your older loved one is in the hospital and doctors are monitoring the situation to determine what’s going on. With luck, nothing dangerous or life-threatening will be found and perhaps your loved one will leave the hospital after a day or two….

It’s been estimated that on average, older hospital patients spend a mere 43 minutes a day out of bed and walking around. The gist? They spend the overwhelming majority of their hospital stay sedentary in bed, which is not healthy and can lead to collateral damage beyond whatever brought them…