Geriatrician Dr Ajeet Sidhu on Monday. Dr Sidhu will be visiting every two months and will also use Telehealth to create better outcomes in health care for Village
residents. Dr Sidhu is pictured with the Village’s director of nursing Helen Spyt,
residents Kaye Saddler and Patsy Webster and Dr Sanjay Jamwal from the Cobar Primary Health Care Centre.
The Lilliane Brady Village has this week welcomed visiting Sydney-based Geriatrician Dr Ajeet Sidhu, who believes that elderly patients in the country should be able to access specialist aged care just like their city counterparts.
Dr Sidhu is visiting on a regular basis at the invitation of local doctor, Dr Sanjay Jamwal who has been working for almost four years to get a specialist doctor to help with the care for the residents of the Lilliane Brady Village.
“Many people think that you go to the Village to die, but that’s not the case,” Dr Sanjay said.
“A few small changes in health care can make a big difference to a person’s quality of life.
“We’re very happy to have Dr Sidhu here,” Dr Jamwal said.
Dr Sidhu has worked in aged care since 2005 and has a number of clinics in Sydney.
He focuses on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of diseases in older people and attends to various problems specific to aging.
Dr Sidhu said his move into geriatric medicine was a good fit for him as he also had a background in pharmacology (the study of how drugs affect the body).
“In my elderly patients, they are usually on a number of medications, which we call polypharmacy.”
Dr Sidhu said different medications may have been prescribed to a patient over many years and that could have been by a number of different doctors and specialists.
He said they may have hypertension, diabetes, gastritis, heart disease, osteoporosis, memory problems, or have experienced a fall.
“Some live alone (and there are problems that come with that) and some even have problems with big families.
“All these factor in to what I call a comprehensive geriatric assessment,” he said.
Dr Sidhu said he was keen to meet the Lilliane Brady Village residents and was excited to be able to start to working alongside Dr Sanjay and the staff at the Village to improve the residents’ health care.
He will visit every two months and also use Telehealth facilities to treat his patients.
