Specialist nurses to evaluate elderly in-patients referred to a department of geriatric medicine.

Background: Increasing numbers of elderly patients are admitted to hospital. Ensuring that they are given appropriate and timely access to the range of hospital and community medical, rehabilitation and social care facilities has become more difficult due to the complexity of management options now available, and limited senior medical staff time.

Methods: We established a scheme in which specialist nurses made first assessments of all inter-departmental referrals to a hospital department of geriatric medicine.