Norma Tickle is not quite sure what caused her to take an early morning fall in her home last week.
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But that tumble resulted in a small sacral bone fracture that necessitated a trip to Wagga Base Hospital, where Mrs Tickle became the 500th patient to be treated by the geriatric medicine unit.
While she is recovering from the fracture, the 87-year-old former Wagga swimming teacher is being cared for by a team of health professionals inside the unit, which caters for elderly people with medical problems that have temporarily hindered their ability to look after themselves.
That team varies from patient to patient, but could include doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dietitians, social workers, speech therapists and specialist discharge planners.
The make-up of the team might change depending on individual cases, but the goal remains constant: Get patients out of hospital and back into their home.
Currently there are eight beds in the geriatric medicine unit, but the completion of stage three of the hospital upgrade will allow for a major expansion to 28 beds in about 2020.
Paul Finucane, the senior staff specialist geriatrician, said the unit was originally opened in November 2016 inside the new main Wagga Base Hospital building.
He believes the unit has a role to fill in not only looking after the region’s elderly patients, but also in serving as an important test for how aged care services are rolled out across the whole of Australia.
“We are particularly challenged in Murrumbidgee because we have a particularly elderly population,” Professor Finucane said.
“If you look at elderly people over the age of 65, particularly over the age of 85, we are 14 years ahead of national Australia, so where we were in 2017, is where the country as a whole is likely to be in 2031, as we have a particularly elderly population in Murrumbidgee.
“What we are trying to say to government is that they should use us as a test bed for evaluating aged care services because what is happening here now is what the rest of Australia will face further down the track.”