The rural Lobbes hospital is in a geographical “hole”. La Louvière to the northwest, Charleroi to the northeast and Chimay to the south. “And there is a growth in the aging of the population in the region”adds Teresa Lorenzano, head nurse and project coordinator. Here, twelve patients are welcomed every week, Mondays and Thursdays: “This is a start, and if there is greater demand, we will increase the service.”
A day hospital is a service without “hospitalization”: you enter in the morning, you leave during the day. “The patients are not sick, it is more of a prevention service: detecting the weaknesses that occur with age, to avoid, for example, developing memory problems, falls or weight loss.”continues Teresa Lorenzano. “We mainly do assessments, examinations, or treatments if problems have already been identified. The goal is to avoid hospitalization.”
The day hospital offers a whole series of multidisciplinary tools to its aging patients: doctor, of course, but also occupational therapist, physiotherapist, psychologist, speech therapist, neuropsychologist, social service, etc. “As I said, we are talking about patients in their eighties, who were often born after the war, when we did not necessarily go to school. Some do not know how to read, or do not always understand scientific and medical terms well. It is important to be able to support them for their health, physical and mental, but also for their daily life. And we must also realize that geriatrics has particular difficulties: each patient is different, because the problem is different. is not age per se, but problems that come with aging, and so two patients with pneumonia, for example, may need to be treated completely differently, because they don’t have pneumonia for the same reasons.”explains Pierre Hanotier. “How do we know if we need to come? Well, it’s usually relatives who say something is wrong. We of course always recommend going to a general practitioner first, but it’s not necessary.”
Ten jobs threatened at Lobbes hospital
