Overview of geriatrics

The care of older adults offers many challenges and many rewards. As we move into the twenty-first century, health care providers will increasingly be called on to provide high-quality, comprehensive care for seniors. Health care professionals, including physicians, nurses, podiatrists, and therapists, need to remain current in the breadth of special issues facing the elderly. Though many seniors are fully functional, healthy, and active, a growing number, especially of the very old, suffer from multiple chronic conditions, polypharmacy, and functional dependency. Though younger patients typically present for medical care, which is focused on a single problem, seniors often have multiple, interacting conditions and competing agendas for their medical care. Professionals need to be prepared to recognize the complex interplay of aging, illness, medications, and social stressors that affect the health of their patients. Today's health care providers, more than ever, must learn to function as members of health care teams, assembled around the specific needs of individual patients in a variety of settings. Foot care is a critical part of the health of older adults, primarily to maintain an active lifestyle and secondarily as a marker of a variety of systemic diseases. Podiatrists are important members of this team and have a special role to play in the diagnosis and treatment of disease as well as helping seniors maintain a high quality of life and maximum function.