Tamil Nadu Will Open Geriatric Clinics And Train Families in Elderly Care

The state government will open outpatient geriatric clinics in government hospitals and deploy nurses across different blocks to train caregivers in elderly care.

The Tamil Nadu government is planning to set up outpatient geriatric clinics in all government hospitals in the state. This will save the elderly the problem of standing in long queues, being pushed by youngsters, and being berated by the general public for taking longer than usual to discuss their problems with doctors.

Healthcare activists and struggling government hospitals have been pressuring the government for some time to prepare for the explosive growth in the number of high-risk elderly patients. The needs of old patients are different and they cannot be seen alongside regular ones all the time, given that many suffer from multiple chronic illnesses that are expensive to treat and may require costly hospital readmissions.

Nurses too will be trained in home and palliative care so they may visit caregivers and teach them how to take care of patients in the family. The nurses will be posted in 385 blocks in the state.

In Tamil Nadu, those in the elderly age group account for 14.3 percent of the population in comparison with the all India percentage of 10.1 percent. On the other hand, people under 30 years are just 46.8 percent of the population compared to the all India figure of 57 percent. Consequently there are fewer people to take care of the elderly. This means that many aged people opt to stay longer in hospitals in order to receive care because they don’t have anyone to attend to them at home. Those who can’t afford to are left to wait helplessly in the corridors of overcrowded government hospitals.

The government is planning a stimulus package to support the training of nurses and community healthcare providers. The nurses will make lists of homes with chronically ill patients and teach the patients’ families how to clean wounds, change dressings and catheters, and deal with tracheostomy.