GP TechLead

Aging can cause normal things to look seemingly abnormal, and can make even experienced healthcare professionals fluster and worry, even those that see older people on a daily basis. The care home rounds are one of my highlights of the week, it breaks up the normal week and allows for the continuity of care that is sorely missing in primary care these days. We start with a morning coffee, or in my case Mocha, and I run though the list of patients to see with the nurse in charge. One of the patients was an elderly lady whom the nurses had noticed a lump on the right side of her groin. They wash and dress her and apparently had not seen it before. Wasn't causing her any issues but the carers seemed worried about a hernia. 

 We had a new resident this week at the care home, a 90 year old man who seemed pleasant enough but with quite advanced dementia. Hadn't met him before but was on the round for an initial meetup to see what his baseline was and to go over a few housekeeping things. Due to covid, we have to gown up, face visor and glove up for every resident, which I normally I find very laborious but in this instance, I was glad got the extra use of PPE.

Covid has really been tough for older people, being constantly reminded that this disease is a death sentence for them and having to isolate at home. What has been even tougher is older people in the care homes. They've heard through out the pandemic that Covid has been racing through the homes and a lot of the deaths have been in them. In the care home I help look after, the social isolation has really been getting to a lot of the residents.