Doctors influence the outcome and treatment of a patient by so many things. Their expertise, their empathy, experience… but what about old age?
Naturally, we associate age with experience, and we want to believe that in many cases that is the truth, but a new study reveals that the age of a doctor can also have a negative impact on patient´s care, possibly due to ” decreased clinical knowledge, adhere less often to standards of appropriate treatment, and perform worse on process measures of quality with respect to diagnosis, screening, and preventive care”. In this study, ” patients treated by older physicians had higher mortality than patients cared for by younger physicians”.
Obviously, we know that does not apply to every elder doctor, and we met many brilliant elder colleagues, but as a young medical team at Hallwang Clinic we know that it is time-consuming and a challenge to always keep up to date with the daily changing opinions and advances in medicine, especially in the fastly evolving field of cancer medicine! And unfortunately, not every doctor may win this challenge. These studies remind us that there is always so much more to do and learn!
More information: Physician age and outcomes in elderly patients in hospital in the US: observational study | The BMJ
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