GERIATRIC EMERGENCIES IN TERMS OF MEDICAL ETHICS

The increase of the elderly population forces changes to some structures such as health, social insurance, business life, and local governments, which are mainly organized according to the young and working population. The field where this transformation has been brought to agenda at the utmost is the medical services. The changing disease characteristics of the elderly population affect the presentation of medical services, as well as the financing and organization models. Increasing multiple health problems in the elders require a multidisciplinary approach. The physician who takes care of geriatric patients faces important problems in terms of both medicine and ethics, and such problems are experienced at the utmost especially in emergency medical conditions. The basic ethical problems experienced by geriatric patients in emergency cases include the inability to use medical services, ageism, and informed consent. Ageism is that the age becomes a determining criterion in the distribution of healthcare resources and some limitations against the elders turn into action. Attitudes supporting ageism have an important place in the background of being unable to utilize services. Ageism should be questioned in terms of ethics. The problems for the elders in attaining emergency medical services could be explained with the three phases of delay model. They could be classified as delay in the decision of going to hospital due to the early non-recognition/negligence of elder person's emergency case by his environment, delay in the process of transportation to the hospital and delay in the medical intervention in spite of being taken to the emergency service