While the emergency department can be a chaotic, unpredictable place, nurses and other staff can still become accustomed to routines. Experience and knowledge help them treat whatever patient walks through the door on any given day. But when it comes to geriatric patients, common processes and benchmarks may not be sufficient for providing the highest quality of care. Emergency Nursing 2026 will provide several education sessions for those interested in learning the latest on how to help this vulnerable patient population.
Frailty and Delirium Starts With Us: A Call to Action for Emergency Nurses
Monday, Sept. 28, 9 a.m.-12 p.m.
Michelle Moccia, DNP, ANP-BC, GS-C
Frailty and delirium will be prominent subjects across all geriatric sessions at Emergency Nursing 2026, and those with a particular interest in the topic should start with this pre-conference session. The highly interactive symposium will delve into these important topics based on version 2.0 of the Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines, released in 2025 by a coalition that includes ENA.
Frailty and delirium are often part of the puzzle when geriatric patients come into the ED, according to session presenter Michelle Moccia, DNP, ANP-BC, GS-C, nurse practitioner geriatric consultant for ApogeeCare. “Older adults rarely present with a neat, tidy story,” she said. “That chief complaint they come in with is not the diagnosis. It’s a symptom. So, your job is to investigate why are they having these symptoms?”
An initial audience activity will assess ED nurses’ confidence and current clinical practice on evaluating older patients for frailty and delirium. Current screening tools will be covered, and attendees will work together in discussing several case studies. The session will also look into the Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation program, including a nursing leadership roadmap to strengthen and empower nurse champions to lead age-friendly care in the ED.
“I’m hoping they take away that they’re on the front line,” said Moccia. “They’re the first ones who can recognize the early warning signs of a vulnerable adult, and they’re in the perfect position to make a difference in what matters to that individual.”
Geriatric Trauma: Navigating Complex Care in a Vulnerable Population
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 9:45-10:05 a.m.
Eleanor Sanders-Estes, MSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, CCRN, AMB-BC
This session will provide attendees with a comprehensive overview of how to enhance triage for geriatric patients in the ED. Largely based on the American College of Surgeons Geriatric Trauma
Guidelines, the presentation will focus primarily on initial resuscitation and reassessment, but it will also cover the common injuries and illnesses that bring geriatric patients to the ED, including falls. Attendees will discuss case studies, with various tools and guidelines available for use.
“What I’d like nurses to come away with is when they’re doing that initial assessment of a trauma patient, thinking, ‘Is this … the normal that I should be looking for in this population?’” said presenter Eleanor Sanders-Estes, MSN, RN, CEN, TCRN, CCRN, AMB-BC, nursing project coordinator for trauma administration at Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center.
Closing the Gap: Implementing Delirium Triage Screening for Geriatric ED Patients
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 9:45-10:05 a.m.
Those wanting an in-depth look at how to implement delirium screening during ED assessment should attend this session presented by members of the Stanford Health Care team.
Assistant Patient Care Manager for Quality Brittany Taylor, DNP, AGPCNP-C, CEN, and her team spearheaded a project from September 2025 to February 2026 to increase usage of delirium screening tools incorporated into Epic. The tools had been in existence for some time, but reviews showed they were not being widely used, and Taylor wanted to find out why. “This project brought together quality leadership, Epic informaticists, physicians and hospital-wide leadership to figure out what that gap was,” she said.
Brittany Taylor, DNP, AGPCNP-C, CEN
The session will review the project’s findings, and detail how in just a few months, they were able to improve from only 40 percent of eligible patients screened to 93 percent. Taylor and clinical nurse Jenna Zehler, BSN, RN, CEN, will share their tips for how to provide high-quality screening to patients who need it.
“I want people to empower their staff members,” said Taylor. “A lot of this was bedside nursing. So, provide your staff and your nurses with the resources and availability because they’re the front line. They know the problems.”
This project has been part of a larger focus on geriatrics at Stanford, which recently earned a Level 1 GEDA.
“Geriatrics isn’t going away,” said Assistant Patient Care Manager for Quality Evan Donnelly, BSN, TCRN, RN, who worked on the project with Taylor. “If anything, it’s going to get bigger.”
“Our population’s getting older, we’re boarding more, so let’s try and capture these patients in the ED and meet them where they are,” added Taylor. By attending these sessions at Emergency Nursing 2026, ED nurses can further prepare to provide high-quality care for this key demographic.