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Geriatric care system in Poland.
K. Wieczorowska-Tobis, A. Rajska-Neumann
Elderly are a rapidly growing population in each country in Europe. Also in Poland the population of subjects aged 65 and more will nearly double between the years 2003 and 2030, reaching almost 25% of the population. To meet the challenges posed by the demographic trends, it is necessary to create a quality system of geriatric healthcare.
The quality of geriatric care in Poland is poor ? above all, it results from a dramatically low number of geriatricians. In Poland, there are only about 80 specialists for the population of almost 40 M people.
Furthermore, in Poland geriatric medicine training is not a compulsory element of the pregraduate education for physicians. Also, courses of geriatric medicine are very rarely included in postgraduate curricula.
As far as the quality of geriatric care is concerned, the rules of holistic approach to the patients are generally not followed. It results from the lack of knowledge of building and operating the multidisciplinary geriatric teams, as it is required by the today?s standards.
Thus, there is a need in Poland to adopt the European standards of healthcare for the elderly. The first step in this adoption is to increase the number of medical trained professionals who would work and cooperate within the multidisciplinary geriatric teams. Such improvement requires fulfillment of the recommendations of the European Union Geriatric Society and the Section of Geriatric Medicine of the European Union of Medical Specialists.
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