Geriatrician
What the work is
Investigates, diagnoses and treats aged-related medical disorders impacting on the cognition and functional status of older people.
Would you enjoy the work?
These are the main tasks in the official description. Mark how each one sounds to you.
- Conducts and performs thorough assessments of older patients in partnership with their support workers and relatives
- Requests laboratory tests, imaging and other diagnostic procedures, and interprets findings to assist diagnosis
- Manages and monitors older patients' ongoing chronic conditions to ensure quality of life
- Provides acute medical care to older patients
- Works to reduce the incidence of post-acute syndrome and functional decline associated with hospitalisation
- Manages geriatric syndromes and disorders characterised by the combination of age-related changes
- Manages acute and long-term neurodegenerative disorders and stroke
- Coordinates and manages the rehabilitation of older people who have suffered a functional decline
- Provides specialist care to older people with complex or multifactorial problems in community settings
Try it
A simulation and a case study from this kind of work, set in a hospital ward and outpatient clinic where specialist physicians see older adults. They are fictional.
The kind of days you could have
Good days
- A puzzling set of symptoms suddenly makes sense and the right treatment starts
- An older patient goes home to the place they love, with the right support
- A junior doctor you teach asks a question you had not thought of
Hard days
- Families who disagree with each other, and with the patient, about what should happen next
- Pressure to free up a bed when the person in it is not yet ready to leave
- Conversations about what matters most that nobody is eager to have
Written by Career Calling as a general guide. Real roles vary by employer and place.
Work a mission
Step into a simulated workplace in this field, with a brief from your manager.
Description and tasks: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Occupation Standard Classification for Australia, 2024, Version 1.0 (opens another site), occupation 264335, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The skill guide above is our plain English summary.