ABSTRACT
Assessing problems with individual systems in older people is done the same way as for younger people: the history taking and examination is fundamentally the same.
The majority of older people are basically healthy, free from severe disability and mental illness, and ‘feel’ little different from a younger person in their attitudes and responses to illness. Cancer is no less threatening, incontinence no less humiliating, and bereavement no less devastating than it would be for you or me. Older people are not ‘them’ – a race apart; they are ‘us’, just older, or ‘us’ in the future.
