title: Specialist care for frail older people.
abstract: At Leicester Royal Infirmary, the care of frail older people occupies a disproportionate amount of emergency department (ED) staff's time and resources. Too few ED staff are trained to deal with the complex comorbidities associated with older patients, 90 per cent of whom are therefore admitted to hospital. To take the pressure off the ED and reduce the number of avoidable admissions, the hospital has set up an emergency frailty unit to treat patients over the age of 70 who need not be admitted to hospital and to ensure they can receive community care as soon as possible. This article describes how the unit operates.
authors.affiliation: sophie.blakemore@rcnpublishing.co.uk
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Blakemore
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D016529:Emergency Nursing; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D016330:Frail Elderly; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019982:Organizational Case Studies; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000592:standards; D010351:Patient Discharge / Q000592:standards; D006113:United Kingdom