Delivering comprehensive geriatric assessment in new settings: Advice for frontline clinicians

Abstract

Over the decades, as the principles of comprehensive geriatric assessment have been established, there have been attempts to apply its principles to settings other than acute hospital medical wards or the general community welling older population, for example, to other settings where older people with infirmity are found. The purpose of this paper is to describe and reflect upon the application of and evidence for comprehensive geriatric assessment in these new settings and give some advice to clinicians about how to optimise their contributions to these processes. I will state my advice having first discussed intermediate care, emergency surgery (hip fracture), elective surgery, dementia and delirium care, emergency care, cancer care, and the care of residents of care homes (mindful of the irony of calling the latter a new setting, given that geriatric medicine originated in long term care).