What Are Risks of Being at the Hospital as an Older Adult?

As we get older, we’re at greater risk of getting sick from hospitalization itself — apart from the symptoms or disease that landed us in the hospital in the first place. While being in the hospital is necessary at times, many older adults and their loved ones see hospitals as a place where you can only get better, without realizing that the hospitalization itself poses significant risks to health and safety. 

This article highlights some of the dangers of hospitalization. While we never want you to avoid necessary hospital stays, if a diligent physician can handle your medical condition safely as an outpatient, you can avoid these potential dangers.

>> READ: Making a hospital stay as comfortable as possible

What Makes the Hospital a Dangerous Place for Older Adults?

As we age, the phrase “an object in motion stays in motion” is particularly relevant: staying mobile and active helps both the mind and the body. Being in the hospital is disruptive because it forces one to break from day-to-day routines, and can make them harder to go back to. Below are five issues that can come up when a hospital stay disrupts daily life.

Bed Rest and Immobility

Bedrest is one of the first hospital admission orders doctors write. While it’s necessary in certain situations, it leads to muscle wasting and weakness, and causes blood and other fluids in the body to redistribute in ways that can cause dizziness and balance problems. It can also create pressure sores — and this is just a partial list. Imposing forced immobility on a person who may already have limited mobility can be dangerous.

Disrupted Sleep

In the hospital, patients get woken up often for routine blood pressure checks, blood drawings, X-Rays, or by a loud roommate. This sleep disruption can play a significant role in the development of what geriatricians call “acute confusional state” or “delirium,” an alteration in consciousness and thinking that can occur in as many as half of all older people who are hospitalized.

New Medications

There are many examples of new medications that might get added during a hospital stay, a common one being a sleep aid. Given the unnatural interruptions to sleep described above, physicians often order sleeping medicines to help patients. Introducing psychoactive medicine at a time when other medications are being started (such as antibiotics for pneumonia or narcotics for pain from a fracture) comes with a huge potential for adverse effects and drug interactions.

Incontinence

It’s common to insert a bladder catheter to collect urine during hospital stays. There are many good medical reasons to do this — for example, when measuring the amount of urine you’re producing if your kidneys are failing or getting fluid out of your lungs using diuretics. But well-meaning staff struggling with an increasing and sicker patient census (and often encouraged by well-meaning family members) may rely on catheters because they obviate the need to walk a patient to the bathroom. Catheters come with the risk of infection and can lead to permanent incontinence because the bladder muscles can become deconditioned when not used (like any other muscle in the body).

It’s an Uncomfortable Place to Be

All of the comforts of home — home cooking, cherished possessions and pictures, a familiar environment — are not found at the hospital. The absence of these small elements can contribute in a big way to the confusion (and boredom) experienced by many patients in the hospital.

What to Do When You Can’t Avoid the Hospital

You should never avoid the hospital when it's critically necessary. Understanding the dangers of a hospitalization isn’t about fearing it, but instead about turning to it when it’s the appropriate and needed course of action – and not because you think it’s always the safest place to be because you’ll be surrounded by 24/7 medical staff.

Most of us find ourselves or a loved one in the hospital at some point. Here are our tips for navigating a hospital stay when it can’t be avoided.