I didn't want to end up with someone else's meal: Colored name tags and hospital bracelets

Nurses at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City were caring for Tom Pineault, age 74, a former merchant seaman, who was recovering from surgery for an ulcerated foot. When they pointed out the yellow name tag on the door of his hospital room, denoting that he was at risk of a fall, he also checked the tag for his name. "I made sure that was me that was in there," he said. "I didn't want to end up with somebody else's meal."

Hospitals are using color-coded name tags and bracelets much more frequently now to avoid errors, by quietly alerting the nurses who see them. The colors differ from hospital to hospital, which may be confusing for nurses who work at different hospitals.

Advice to hospital patients and their advocates: Ask about the meaning of any colored bracelets or name tags you receive. It'll ensure that you get the right meal – and maybe the right meds.

Thanks to Anemona Hartocollis for the article in the Sept 25 issue of the New York Times.

She turned 104 in April: Aggressive treatment for centenarians

Her father had sent her to secretarial school. She married, and then split up with her husband, a traveling salesman, during the Great Depression. She worked as a stenographer to pay rent to her parents for a small sunny bungalow overlooking a canal in East Rockaway, New York. She retired in 1961.

Then in 2003, when Hazel Homer was 99, after several recent hospital stays, more than one doctor advised that there was little to be done about her failing heart except wait for it to fail a final time. But Hazel was not interested in waiting to die of old age.

She kept talking to doctors until one agreed to install a biventricular defibrillator, five years ago. Now, at 104, her heart is still ticking, thanks to the specialized pacemaker and defibrillator that synchronize her heartbeat and can deliver a slight shock to revive her if her heart falters.

So far, it has never needed to shock her heart out of a potentially fatal arrhythmia.

Hazel now has a live-in aide at her tiny bungalow. She has been quite healthy throughout her life. Indeed, since the surgery, she has had only a single hospital stay, a brief one for pneumonia.

Her operation, a month before her 100th birthday, reflects a new frontier in medicine: surgery for centenarians. Some say, however, that aggressive treatment for the extremely elderly can give patients false hope and a diminished quality of life.

Advice to adult children of extremely elderly parents: Heed your parent's preferences about aggressive care, rather than your own.

Read a story about aggressive care on the other side of the coin.

Thanks to Anemona Hartocollis for the source article in today’s New York Times.