Treatment of the elderly refers to a set of multidisciplinary and multidimensional diagnostic instruments explicitly formulated to retrieve vital elderly’ information pertaining their medical, psychological and functional capabilities. The information obtained is instrumental as it facilitates the development of long-term follow up and treatment plans for elderly. Noteworthy, assessment treatment for the elderly dwells on their complex medical, psychological and depression problems in addition to the quality of life and functional status (Kingdon and Turkington, 2002).
Comprehensive elderly treatment assessment is always keen several areas of old peoples’ lives. These areas are but not limited to current health situation of the person, past illness, family situation, a measure of cognitive issues, nutritional status and need, assessment of mobility, disease risk factors and health promotion activities. Unrecognized co-morbidities and impairment motivate elderly treatment assessment by the physician. The aged are therefore left exposed to high risks in terms of medical morbidity and mortality. Elderly persons are usually viewed by the medical specialist, mainly physician, to have the cognitive impairment which is more often than not unrecognized (Thomas and Drake, 2012). Cognitive disability, which is majorly perceptions, is caused by several factors but the core ones are dementia, depression, and delirium.
In assessing patients’ functional status, the aged are screened for cognitive impairment and as well as screening for depression and this is usually done by neurologists, geriatrics, psychiatrist or neuropsychologist. As earlier stated in the introduction of this analysis, information is obtained from the elderly persons by experts who are used to assess the nature of the treatment to be given. Based on perceptions or what others called cognitive assessment, the following case study type questions are formulated in assisting experts in retrieving vital information which is used to improve the welfare of the aged.
The first case study type questions are:
Over the past weeks, have you been disturbed by feeling depressed?
How often are you bothered by little interest in your daily chores?
These questions are guiding in finding information that can be used to improve the lives of the aged.
The second case study is:
Name the object am carrying.
Spot the type of pattern on the object is carrying.
Repeatedly ask the person to repeat question one and two above. These sets of case study questions will assist medical practitioners in getting relevant perception or cognitive information leading better health care to the aged.
