The Short Coat Podcast

Elders are not just sickly adults. Ours is an aging society, and as the populations skews older, medicine has begun to realize that treating elder patients isn't the same as treating adults or children. Treating the conditions of older people means that clinicians have to understand them in ways that go beyond diseases and drugs. Hence, the science of geriatrics. Dr. Louise Aronson is a geriatrician and the author of Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life (Bloomsbury 2019). It's a beautifully written book the focuses on the stories of our elders and what they can teach us about their needs both biological and psychological. Among the things co-hosts Miranda Schene, Emma Barr, Mason LaMarche and Nick Lind learned: Older people respond in unpredictable ways to medications. Often the work of a geriatrician is to 'deprescribe' medicines that are hurting them. Never undervalue the things that are important to elders just because they aren't medicines or procedures. If the patie