The changing profile of our patients

摘要

Life expentancy has been increasing, from 45 years and 49 years for men and women respectively in 1901 (Hicks and Allen, 1999), and by 2014 life expectancy at birth in the UK was 79.3 years and 83.0 years. Figures from the National Audit Office show that 62% of beds are occupied by people aged 65 years or older. The average age of admissions into my organisation is 82 years old. On starting my nurse training, I was taught to apply the framework of the nursing process to plan care-assess, plan, implement and evaluate (Royal College of Nursing, 2004) formed the basis of our care planning, commonly used in conjunction with Roper et al's (1996) 'Activities of Living' model. Over time nursing roles have evolved, specialist nurses concerned with falls, pressure ulcers and dementia are now commonplace, frameworks such as falls assessments, dementia screening, Waterlow scoring, and nutrition risk assessments are standard practice, and safeguarding processes have changed the way we care for vulnerable people.