A Predictive Model of In‐Hospital Mortality in Elderly Patients Admitted to Medical Intensive Care Units

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

building, it was crowded, with an average living space of 6 m 2 per resident.Individual beds were separated with wooden boards approximately 1.2 m high.The small communal toilet and shower area was near the living and dining area.Frailer residents usually used bedside urinals or commodes for toileting.No single room was available for isolation purposes.The staff-to-resident ratio was around 1:15, and the majority of carers had no formal training in health care.This report illustrates how a single nursing home resident infected with SARS during hospitalization gave rise to several secondary cases, some resulting in death.During the SARS epidemic, nursing homes residents admitted to some acute hospitals with fever, but clinically not suspected to be suffering from SARS, would be transferred from a ''fever'' ward to a ''cohorting'' ward for about 10 days before returning to their nursing homes.Although such measures may have reduced the spread of the infection to nursing homes, they have, nevertheless, increased the workload of acute hospitals tremendously, and in some unfortunate instances, led to further in-hospital outbreaks.Community-based outreach teams including geriatricians and nurses were mobilized to closely monitor nursing home residents discharged from hospitals.They worked closely with the department of health and hospital wards to keep up-to-date information on nursing home residents afflicted with SARS.Advice was given to nursing home staff on the use of protective gear and provision of isolation facilities for residents with febrile illness and those recently discharged from hospitals to prevent cross-infection.Perhaps the way to manage this in the future is to keep nursing home residents onsite wherever possible, avoiding the need to come into contact with high-risk areas such as the ER and hospital wards.