Carpenter helped develop guidelines to improve older adult care in emergency departments

Carpenter

Chris Carpenter, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, co-chaired the national Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines Task Force, which created new recommendations intended to improve the care for older adults in emergency departments.

Among the recommendations are hiring more staff with geriatric training, educating existing staff about older patients and enhancing treatment for those who suffer from common problems of old age, such as falls, delirium or dementia.

“Older adults, who account for about 20 percent of all emergency department visits worldwide, have unique needs that need to be addressed,” Carpenter said. “These guidelines are an important step in providing geriatric-focused treatment in emergency departments for this growing population.”

Four organizations — the American Geriatrics Society, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the Emergency Nurses Association and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine — developed the guidelines.