A Concept of the Foundation of Korean Hospital for the Elderly who have Neuropsychiatric Disorders

ABSTRACT

The population of the elderly and neuropsychiatric elderly patients increases radically, but realistic management in the welfare and medical dimensions are not adequate. Especially, the treatment and care for the neuropsychiatric geriatric patients have not been achieved properly for the lack of good medical facilities and heavy economic burden. Therefore, this paper will propose a model of specialized neuropsychiatric geriatric hospital suited to our reality for the welfare of the elderly themselves and their families. For this, we investigated the needs of medical consumers through surveys. Our subjects are 41 families of neuropsychiatric elderly patients in admission and 51 caregivers. In these surveys, patrons expect the establishment of specialized geriatric hospital proper to the characteristics of neuropsychiatric elderly patients. In addition, they hope patients adminssion fee to be reduced as difficulty and specialty of neuropsychiatric geriatric patient treatment are actively applied to the medical insurance fee and national support system. According to our examination of the caregeivers for the neuropsychiatric elderly patients, caregivers didn't receive systematized training, but only brief care-giving education. Their status is also unstable and their pay is low. These issues are very important for the quality of care-giving work. Therefore, specialized neuropsychiatric geriatric hospitals should be established properly to our social reality and request, and national and social supports for the training and education of medical staffs and quite necessary.