Abstract
Older adults are the fastest growing segment of our population and contribute greatly
to the high costs of health care. The primary concern among older adults seeking health
care is maintaining or improving functional independence. This concern is the focus
of both rehabilitative care and geriatric medicine; however, collaboration between
these fields can be hampered by a lack of mutual understanding of the fundamental
principles of the other field. We describe 3 steps that can be implemented at an organizational
or individual level to bridge the fields of geriatric medicine and rehabilitation,
allowing them to better serve older patients. These include (1) recognizing the interwoven
concepts of multimorbidity, function, and frailty; (2) communicating with a common
language; and (3) synthesizing our knowledge from both fields.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
ICD (International Classification of Disease), ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), PM&R (physical medicine and rehabilitation)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 05, 2019
Footnotes
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
