We just want to do the right thing for patients

Geriatrician Dr. Raj Parikh

Complaints from people unhappy with the care given to their elderly relatives at the Royal Oldham Hospital prompted a nursing chief to speak out in last Thursday’s Chronicle.

Today reporter MARINA BERRY speaks to consultant geriatrician Dr Raj Parikh.

consultant geriatrician Dr Raj Parikh makes it his business to ensure that care of the elderly is good — and getting better.

He said: “We try to take a pride in what we do and to make things as good as possible.

“When someone has a bad experience we don’t want people to have the idea that if they go into the Royal Oldham Hospital they are treated without respect or dignity.

“We spend a lot of time trying to improve things. We go out and look at best practice in other centres and incorporate it in what we do here.

“We are very keen to take in the good things that other people do, to keep pinching ideas that work elsewhere, to bin the bad stuff and promote the good things.

“But we aren’t just bringing in best practice — in some ways we are trying to take the lead.

“It’s never nice to hear about cases where we fail. It’s a wake-up call when we see something adverse.”

Dr Parikh qualified in 2000, and has held a position at the Royal Oldham Hospital for three years.

Why the interest in caring for the elderly?

“It’s the complexity I enjoy,” he said. “I get to see people with a variety of different conditions and I have to dig down and find out what is going on.

“I always wanted to do it. When I was a medical student I always liked older people, and I worked for a doctor who was inspiring. I like general medicine, and for me it is about trying to help people to function as well as possible.”

He added: “Caring for people with dementia is very challenging. It can be a complicated puzzle, and the saddest part is trying to explain to their family what is ha

Dr Parikh said while falling, incontinence, acute confusion and dementia were more common with ageing, they were not a normal part of ageing.

He says people live longer, healthier lives: someone who might once have been considered elderly at 65 will now not reach a similar stage until well into ther eighties.

Dr Parikh runs training courses for staff at the Royal Oldham Hospital to improve the care of elderly people, with such success that the project is on the cusp of being extended across the North-West.

He said there was a constant desire in the hospital for improvement.

“The patient may want one thing but their relatives want another. There is a fine line to be trod at such times, but we always make the patient our primary focus.”

Doctors regularly meet families on the wards, where concerns can be discussed.

“The population is ageing at quite a rate, and as needs become more complex it is important that we keep abreast of changes in what people want and need, and to ensure frontline care is responsive.

“We can’t stand still.”



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