Taking care of an elder means that you have the distinct honor of learning just how screwed up our medical system is. You learn how little doctors really know, how arrogant they can be, how little vision they have and what poor decisions they make. They are just lucky they don't have themselves as physicians.
But don't get me wrong - I think the geriatric specialists that I have had the chance to interact with are really sharp and have some good skills (medical and social). And in general I really like the ER staff. It's the floor docs who boggle my mind. Partly because they have the longer responsibility. ER docs respond to a crisis and they triage and move on. Your personal physician (or team) have the chance to deal with a range of problems over time and develop relationships and see the big picture and the details. The floor docs are seeing you at a time when you are very at-risk (otherwise you wouldn't be there) but it is probably not an acute crisis. They have to make the decisions which guide the direction all of your treatment goes.
It's like if you are a researcher, all your biases effect everything from your choice of subject matter, to your hypotheses, and the methods you use to research it.
But this is someone's life, and they don't have the luxury of reading a different research article or changing physicians. And if you fail to even contact the doctor who manages the on-going care and knows more about the situation than you do, how can you expect to do a halfway reasonable job?
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