Are doctors ageist?

This study suggests so:

The researchers compared the responses of doctors to people aged under 65 and over 65. They pointed out that 65 was no longer regarded as being particularly old in British society.
Prof Ann Bowling, of the department of psychology, at University College London, led the study. She said: “Resources are limited and doctors have to make difficult decisions. Maybe they have run out of options and are using age as an excuse.
“When we spoke to the doctors they were quite ready to justify their reasons. They may see older people as less deserving,” she said.

Comments

Conciergedoc
As a newly minted geriatrician, ageism is a fact of medical life. Doctors routinely state age as a factor when consider various treatment modalities. It’s one of the reasons I went in to geriatrics in the first place. Too many pcp, cardiologists, and GI people would defer treatment based largely on age. In fact, as a moonlighter, I get consults jsut based on this. 95 y/o with new fall and ER finds hip fracture. Admit to Geri service, consult ortho. Why not admit to orth directly I asked teh ER which they do often? Answer, patient is old.
Unfortunately with recent cut off for federal Geriatric medicine fellowship funding will only result in more ageism. The only thing that will change ageisim is that the new baby boomers are more demanding and will demand better care, not be dismissed by lazy physicians.
Anonymous
“Ageism”, would that be treating old people different because they are, well, different? Has the law of entropy been repealed? Doesn’t age matter? Isn’t that why there are geriatric fellowships?
Who is the lazy physician in the scenario? In my experience, 95 year olds whose general medical care is in the hands of orthopedic surgeons tend to have bad things happen to them–especially if the surgeon is not ageist, and treats them just as he would a 34 year old.
Conciergedoc
Ageism is absolutely not treating old people different because they are medically complex or medically different. Ageism is a social attitude, not a medical condition, nor a risk factor. It’s applying stereotypes of weak, frail without seeing the patient. It assigning a less value to life due to life expectnacy rather than quality of exisitng life. Ageism is an excuse used by many physicians when trying to avoid making difficult, complex medical decisions regards a senior patient’s care.
We of course appreciate & insist being involved in the care of a elderly patients. However, ageism leads to discrimination, be it in medicine or general societal values. I would even argue that age could even be ignored when describing a patient, in the same way we no longer describe patients as white or african american in H&P.
Anonymous
Well, I still report age–and race and social and economic conditions in many of my evaluations because a the social circumstances in which the patient is experiencing their illness plays a major role in treatment planning for my patients. The buzzword for that is “culturally sensitive care”.
Discrimination is not ipso facto bad. Certain kinds of discrimination are good while other kinds are bad. As you go through your day, you will commit numerous acts of discrimination as a necessary part of not functioning like a complete idiot.

Are doctors ageist?

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