Ageism & healthcare! What’s that?
Okay. So first things first. What’s ageism? In modern times, it’s considered a form of discrimination where people are mistreated based on a person’s age.
People are living longer & elderly population is likely to surpass the active age population soon. So, attitudes towards elderly need to change everywhere including in healthcare.
A systematic review published in journal PLOS ONE found that in many instances, age of the patient determined the type of treatment offered OR withheld. A study of 9105 hospitalised patients found that life sustaining treatments were more likely to be withheld from older patients. Another study found that older people were excluded from clinical trials, even if the trials related to diseases that appear later in life, say Parkinson’s disease.
Ageist attitudes are apparent in interpersonal relations as well; like offering to help or using patronising words;based on assumptions about the cognitive and physical abilities of the elderly .
In healthcare, particularly during pandemic, this became more apparent, when healthcare professionals had to decide who to treat, using age as a proxy for making decisions.
Older age is often associated, wrongly, with declining health and activity. However, elderly people are a very diverse group across the spectrum of fitness.
Such a discrimination impacts physical, mental and social health of the victims, elderly; in this case. People can land up in depression or even cardiovascular events.
What’s the way forward?
Healthcare professionals should be trained to overcome their age related biases when dealing with elderly people. Majority of the time, healthcare professionals come across elderly people as patients;?so they equate age with health issues.
Aging process needs to be understood better by healthcare providers, so their biases don’t affect their decisions when treating elderly.
There is still some way to go, but identifying a situation is the first step to correcting it. We all need to understand that & as a society, need to work towards eliminating this ageism.
