What is Frailty?

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Hi. I am Sean Ninan, a consultant geriatrician in Leeds. I believe that older people deserve high quality care but that people need the heart and the knowledge and skills to deliver this. Older people deserve accurate diagnoses and the right tests and treatments. But as people get older, and develop more and more health problems, making these diagnoses can be tricky and choosing the right tests and treatments challenging.

When I was in medical school I was told that “80% of diagnosis is made on history alone.” But what can you do when your patient can’t remember what happened? Then, when we do more and more tests, this reveals more and more abnormalities. Anaemia, a positive dipstick, a high blood pressure, sometimes with a low blood pressure in the same day…

We are told that older people are both under-treated and over-treated. How can you make a wise decision? When should you stop statins or start DOACs? And how can we make sure the person’s voice is heard if they can’t speak for themselves?

I want to show others how to do this as well as possible. In this course we cover frailty, it’s related syndromes and introduce the mystery that is “comprehensive geriatric assessment.”

Come and join us online, or in person in the beautiful city of Leeds, to learn from expert speakers, and also to share our experiences as different members of the MDT working in hospital specialties, community beds and in peoples homes.