What does elderly health and management do?

Simply put, it is a full-cycle health service that focuses on the elderly from physiology to psychology, from daily care to disease intervention. The core is not to wait for illness before treatment, but to combine "prevention" and "nurturing" to help the elderly maintain their ability to live independently as much as possible and improve their quality of life in their later years. It is not as thin as "prescribing medicines for physical examinations for the elderly" as many people think.

I have been working at a street health center for almost four years. I have met more and more elderly people of all kinds, and my feelings about this matter have become more and more real. Last summer, when I went to conduct a home inspection, I met Uncle Li, who lives in Building 3. He is 76 years old and has been diabetic for almost 10 years. He secretly reduced his antidiabetic medicine by half. He said that he always felt weak after taking it, so he just took a bite of candied fruit. His children tried to persuade him several times but they had a falling out, saying that they did not understand that he only had so few hobbies as he got older. We didn't mention taking medicine when we came to his home. We first chatted with him for half an hour about the oysters he grew on the balcony, and handed him a list of low-sugar candied fruits we compiled. We said these can raise blood sugar slowly and don't need to be completely avoided. We took his physical examination report to the endocrinologist at the community hospital, adjusted the dosage of medicine, and installed a small blood sugar monitoring program for him that is bound to our backend. We can receive alerts immediately when there are any abnormal data. Now, more than half a year has passed, and his blood sugar has stabilized within a reasonable range. He greets us all the way when he sees us, and insisted on giving us rose seedlings he cut last time.

Of course, there is no completely unified view on the boundaries of this matter in the industry. Many doctors who come to cooperate with the hospital believe that the health management of the elderly must strictly control clinical indicators and intervene whenever there is an abnormality. Even if the elderly feel temporarily uncomfortable, the indicators must be suppressed first to avoid subsequent serious complications such as myocardial infarction and stroke.； Some colleagues who have been doing home care for the elderly for more than ten years believe that the subjective feelings of the elderly should be put first. If the elderly cannot eat or do anything in order to lower their blood sugar by 0.5, and live in fear every day, it will violate the original intention of improving the quality of life. After doing it myself, I feel that this is like descaling an old purple clay teapot that has been used at home for decades. You can't use a hard brush to scratch the body of the pot, and you can't leave it clean until the spout is clogged. You have to adjust it slowly according to the actual situation of the old man.

If you ask us what we usually do, there is really no definite answer. Sometimes we prescribe exercise to uncles and aunts who have just retired, and teach them how to square dance without hurting their knees, and how to use fitness equipment without straining their knees.； Sometimes they visit disabled and semi-disabled elderly people to change their nasogastric feeding tubes, and instruct family members on how to pat their backs to prevent bedsores. ； Sometimes I have to help the elderly living alone with meal assistance and cleaning services, and even act as a half-emotional tree hole, listening to the elderly chatting about the family's quarrels for half an hour. To put it bluntly, it is to provide a cushion for the health of the elderly, solve minor problems in advance, and help find a suitable response path when problems do arise, so that the elderly can live more comfortably and with dignity in their later years.