Examples Of Ageism

The first prejudice ageism brings is in healthcare and medicine. In hospitals, there is a "senior profiling" that happens among the staff with their patients. This generally leads to inappropriate medical care. For instance, patients over the age of 60 seem to get checked into the hospital and automatically get diagnosed with dementia. This is a huge bias among the hospital staff. Many elderlies do not have dementia and are emitted for different problems but because of the age, doctors assume the issue to be dementia. In the article, ‘Ageism in Healthcare and How Dangerous it can be', the author Val Jones, explains her experience with this hospital bias and gives examples. One of the examples given was about an attorney she cared for who was
She, too, was written off as having dementia until an MRI was performed to explore the reason for new left-eye blindness. The tumor was successfully removed, but she was denied brain rehabilitation services because of her ‘history of dementia'" (Jones 1). The patient was wrongfully diagnosed and was denied treatment because of the mistake the doctors made. Also, with age comes vulnerability to medicine and its side effects. Study shows that hospitalized patients are very different than their usual, every day, self. The reason is because of the new-found vulnerability to medication, there are higher chances of an elderly hospitalized patient to be impaired in the slightest way. This brings a new bias because doctors now prescribe medicine to their elderly patients without the knowledge of their history. Not only does it bring a bias, but it brings a problem. The problem is not knowing if the patient is experiencing new symptoms or if they've had a history involved with them. The article explains that doctors typically order MRIs to determine the problem to make sure it isn't a new symptom or cause. Overall, ageism is big in healthcare and continues to
The study was about how managers make management decisions to solve problems that occur. The way it was set up was by recruiting participants to become false managers to a fake company. During the study, the group was split into two, half were asked to make decisions about an incident that occurred with a younger worker. The other half were to make a decision about the same thing but they had an older worker. Then, both groups were asked how they would handle multiple situations that were given to them by looking over several different ways. The results, as you could've guessed, were completely different comparing the two groups. The article states that the older workers results were showing that they were more resistant to change, less motivated to keep up with the technology, they were less creative, and less capable of handling stressful situations. (Dennis, 86). The false managers viewed the older workers as basically, useless. In this study, the elder worker was less favored over the younger one and deemed unlikely to get promoted by employer. However, the results of the younger worker were as explained above, much different compared to the older worker. They were favored greatly by employers and will be the first to get promoted. This study has proven a glimpse of ageism and how it effects the work force. Overall, ageism is indeed a continuingly