| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
| The influence of patient's age on clinical decision-making about coronary heart disease in the USA and the UK | | Author(s) | Ann Adams, Christopher D Buckingham, Sara Arber |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 26, part 2, March 2006 |
| Pages | pp 303-322 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_ASO |
| Keywords | Heart disease ; Medical care ; Age groups [elderly] ; Middle aged ; Attitude ; General practitioners ; Comparison ; United Kingdom ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The likelihood of ill health, including coronary heart disease (CHD), increases with age. This paper uses an analytic approach based on conceptualising decision-making as a classification process, to explore the ways in which UK and US primary care doctors' cognitive processes contribute to ageism in health care at three key decision points during consultations. In each country, 56 randomly selected doctors were shown videotaped vignettes of doctors portraying patients with CHD. The patients' ages (55 or 75 years), gender, ethnicity and social class were varied systematically. During the interviews, doctors gave free recall accounts of their decision-making. The results do not establish that there was substantial ageism in the doctors' decisions, but rather suggest that diagnostic processes pay insufficient attention to the significance of older patients' age and its association with the likelihood of co-morbidity and atypical disease presentations. The doctors also demonstrated more limited use of "knowledge structures" when diagnosing older than midlife patients. With respect to interventions, differences in the national health care systems rather than patients' age accounted for the differences in doctors' decisions. US doctors were significantly more concerned about the potential for adverse outcomes if important diagnoses were untreated, while UK general practitioners (GPs) cited greater difficulty in accessing diagnostic tests. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-060314208 A |
| Classmark | CQH: LK: BB: SE: DP: QT6: 48: 8: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|