6/26/2014 – For Elderly Patients, a Sharper Focus

The idea took shape as Dr. Shawn Barnes, a psychiatry resident at the University of California, San Diego, watched some hospitalized older patients struggling with consent forms.

It wasn’t because they didn’t understand the forms, or questioned the treatments they were about to undergo. “They had difficulty signing the forms because they had trouble seeing,” Dr. Barnes said.

Hence his call, in an article published in the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias, for facilities that treat older adults to maintain a stockpile of cheap standard reading glasses, the kind drugstores sell.

Read the full article at The New York Times.