Abstract

RAMOS, Raquel; MENDONCA, Catarina; PEREIRA, Cláudia  and  PAIVA, Paulo. AGE – Structured Geriatric Assessment: A Quality Improvement Project in the Internal Medicine Service. Medicina Interna [online]. 2017, vol.24, n.4, pp.269-274. ISSN 0872-671X.  https://doi.org/10.24950/rspmi/O162/16/2017.

Introduction:Hospitalization is an opportunity to assess in a structured way the vulnerability of elderly patients. The authors present the AGE project for Geriatric Structured Assessment, developed in an Internal Medicine Service of Porto Hospital Center. Methods:The AGE project was characterized by the application of a vulnerability screening scale (VES-13) to all hospitalized elderly patients followed by a quality indicator checklist. These quality indicators were selected from the consensus document Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders-3 (ACOVE-3), applied to this reality and supported by assessment tools such as the Mini-Cog and the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). In a second phase of the project leaflets related to common problems in home care of vulnerable elders were developed with the nursing teams for teaching the patient and/or caregiver. Likewise, we have included a checklist of medical discharge conditions, one for professionals and another for the patient. Results:The authors present the first quarter results of the project implementation, which included 543 elderly patients. The VES-13 scale was applied to 300 of these patients ant 237 (79.0%) of them were identified as vulnerable elderly patients. Eighty tree patients (35.0%) were screened for dementia and 24 (52.2%) new cases of suspected dementia were identified. Conclusion:The authors conclude that the AGE project is a strategy for the quality improvement in hospitalized geriatric patients changing the behavior of the health care team.

Keywords : Aged; Geriatric Assessment; Hospital Departments; Internal Medicine; Quality Improvement.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )