St. Joseph's Healthcare System

Dr. Derek Desilva joins Dr. Mark Rosenberg, Chairman of Emergency Medicine at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson NJ. Dr. Rosenberg shares a personal story about his mother who hated her Emergency Department experiences and used that past to create a more pleasant environment for geriatric emergency care at St. Joseph's.

"The elderly population already has significant healthcare problems, relatively minor but it's in the background. They may have emphysema, hypertension, or COPD and when they get sick they call their physician and their physician is frequently overcrowded. What they say is go to the emergency department so we see seniors 7 times more frequently than their younger cohorts. This is different because we put together everything we need to make a senior comfortable in the emergency department. It's not only the amenities it's the concierge service, the complimentary medicine, and it's also the training of the staff to better take care of seniors and their needs. The harpist that we invite in makes the patients feel better and it makes the staff feel better. The nurses love it and therefore they can give better care to the seniors and it is the best single thing we have ever done. When the senior gets to the emergency department it's very important that they're relaxed, that they're able to give a good history to the physician and to the caregiving team and allow the caregiving team to best take care of them."