Geriatrics in the Danish health care system

After having occupied a modest place in the Danish health system for many years, geriatrics now shows signs of stability and growth. Instruction in geriatrics has been strengthened by the creation of a professorship in 1991. Structural changes, particularly in the Copenhagen hospital system since 1987, have given geriatrics a more prominent place, and from 1992, there will be more emphasis on this field. There has been increased interest in geriatrics in the primary health care sector on the part of general practitioners and home nurses. Geriatrics in the hospital sector takes the form of separate departments in large acute hospitals and independent hospital units and elsewhere is seen as a part of departments of internal medicine. In Denmark, the geriatric patient is a patient with many concomitant physical and psychic illnesses and the resultant social problems. Acute organ specific problems are generally taken care of outside of geriatric departments.