Essay On Ageism

There are profound effects of ageism that can be harmful to a patient’s overall health. Ageism can cause physicians to consistently treat older patients unequally compared to younger adults. Unequal treatment can be divided into the under-treatment of symptoms and the over-treatment of symptoms. The imbalance in how a physician would treat a geriatric patient is ageist because the older adult is not getting fair treatment in every case. Under-treatment and over-treatment are different; however, they are both equally as harmful to a patients health.

One consequence of a caregiver having an ageist attitude can be the overmedication of geriatric patients. Overmedication can occur if medical providers offer misguided health recommendations based

Under-treatment is common because of the misguided perceptions many healthcare providers have for older adult patients. In Dr. Erdman Palmore’s Ageism Survey (2001) of community-dwelling older adults ages 60 to 93, 43% of respondents reported that “a doctor or nurse assumed my ailments were caused by my age,” and 9% said they were “denied medical treatment because of age.”(cite) Situations like these are detrimental because if the symptoms are because of a legitimate problem that is overlooked due to old age, a patient’s health can worsen and a small problem can grow into something fatal. Furthermore, a patient who is told that a symptom is because of their old age can internalize those negative feelings that the physician expresses, and can then become depressed due to believing that they are helpless. Negative attitudes affect people’s physical and mental health. A few opinions that healthcare providers have about older patients that cause under-treatment are evident in a current cross-sectional survey, the Expectations Regarding Aging Scale, which assessed perceptions of aging. The majority of providers surveyed were primary care providers (PCP). PCP’s include nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and physicians. Over 60% of PCPs agreed with the statements “Having more aches and pains is an accepted part of aging” and “The human body is like a car: when it gets old, it gets worn out” (61%). Another 52% agreed that one should expect to become more forgetful with age, and 17% agreed “mental slowness” is “impossible to escape,” (cite). An example of under-treatment of a symptom in an older adult is back pain. Pain is commonly under-treated among older adults. While patients may already have ageist expectations about the