Liz Garcia-Leavitt
Aug 26, 2017 · 1 min read

I congratulate you for the humorous tone of your post but worry about what it says of how our older patients are treated in healthcare settings. You admit the patient had dementia and presumably limited capacity to understand what was happening to him. Imagine if we switched the ages from 92 to 5 years old. No good pediatric hospital would force a terrified child into a CT scanner 3 times without trying non-medication interventions to help them calm down. How is this acceptable with adults with a similar level of understanding. Patients are not our opponents. Combative patients with dementia are communicating unmet needs the only way they can.

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