Geriatric Approach in Primary Care: Case Reports from a Rural Town

Abstract

Geriatric patients tend to have multiple diseases and a high burden of medication. Primary care centers are more accessible for the elderly to meet their examination and prescription needs compared to hospitals. In rural places, the convenience of primary care centers is far more important. Therefore, family physicians may be the only doctors in rural places to correct and/or supply proper medications as well as detecting ongoing problems of the elderly. In this article, three geriatric patients who visited their family physician in a rural town, Bala, were evaluated in terms of potentially inappropriate drug use.

Keywords

• primary care
• inappropriate use of medication
• polypharmacy.