Older Patients Are Persons Too

I have the distinct pleasure of meeting on a regular basis with a group of outstanding third-year medical students who are doing a medicine clerkship at my hospital. For many years now, I have taken the liberty of incorporating a session on geriatric assessment with a focus on caring for the older hospitalized patient. This past month I decided to try something different. I asked the students to complete two questionnaires that I had previously used when teaching students in a geriatric rotation: Palmore’s “Facts on Aging Quiz”1 and the Dye and Sassenrath quiz on aging.2

For t...