Further Observations on Clinical Errors in the Care of the Elderly

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Abstract
This discussion of diagnostic and therapeutic pitfalls in caring for older patients serves to emphasize the manifold responsibilities of the physician responsible for their care either in institutional settings or private practice. Indispensable for enlargement of his horizons is the constant check-up of an active department of pathologic anatomy. By overcoming personal fears, fixations and frustrations about old age the members of the medical profession will find their efforts with these patients rewarding and satisfying. Most surprising perhaps of all will be the personal discovery of so much that was not taught in medical school and is still hard to find in medical textbooks. A further unheralded gain from the study of older patients will be the light shed on the problems of the middle aged and the young. In treating a man or woman in the twenties one has to guess what lied ahead, whereas with men and women in the eighth and ninth decades nearly everything possible has already happened. Careful analysis of their histories will reveal surprising victories over serious diseases but more importantly, may disclose to the analytic mind broad correlations of cause and effect as yet neither known nor divined.

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