Providing medical students with exposure to healthy older people may help promote positive attitudes, research says.

Older doctors and doctors with more experience with the elderly have a more positive attitude towards older people, a new survey has found.

Researchers analysed responses from 122 doctors to a survey designed to gauge attitudes towards older people, according to a report in the Internal Medicine Journal.

It found that doctors who were aged over 30, female, more senior in position, had social contact with elderly people or who had experience in aged care showed a more positive attitude towards older people.

The authors said the attitudes were similar to results from other various population groups. These should raise concerns about the current medical curriculum as it does not appear to have a positive effect on raising the average attitudinal levels of doctors above that of the general population.

Providing medical students with more exposure to healthy older people earlier in their studies may help students acquire positive attitudes, the researchers suggested.

“Subsequent consolidation of positive attitudes could be achieved by providing junior doctors with aged care educational sessions which involve interaction with healthy older people,” they said.

“These findings can be used to inform future development of undergraduate and post graduate medical curricula and form a basis for future studies on the effectiveness of these interventions in improving doctors’ attitudes,” the authors concluded.

Dr Peter Forde from the Australia Medical Association said the issue was very pertinent in Australia at present

“The Prime Minister is talking about 25 per cent of our population being over 65 by 2050. Doctors will need to recognise that older people will comprise an increasing proportion of their workload,” he said.

“There are opportunities to improve perception of young doctors in respect of older persons when they are well and when they’re ill.”

Forde said the AMA has advocated for improved resources in general practice to facilitate GPs working with medical students at the senior undergraduate level in nursing homes and to bring more specialists in.

“It is very interesting work, I’ve done a lot of it, and it is ripe for development, as well as preventative health issue to promote healthy ageing,” he said.

More resources could be found for medical students to be attached to residential aged care facilities of around 100 beds. They could assist with initial assessments and work with visiting doctors on their rounds, he suggests.

“Nursing homes could provide fantastic clinical opportunities. At the moment we’re way too dependent on technology, and nursing homes could provide an opportunity for the students to hone their clinical skills.”

Rhonda Nay, professor of interdisciplinary aged care at the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care (ACEBAC), is more forthright in her comments on the need for medical students to work with, and better understand, older people.

“Unfortunately ageism is alive and well in universities and hospitals where students continue to be socialised to think care of older people is not sexy,” she said.  

“We have known for many years that most doctors, nurses and other health professionals will spend most of their time working with older people. The need to include compulsory aged care learning in the undergraduate curriculum is supported by all of the evidence; and yet we still find most graduates have had very limited exposure to experts in the field and relevant theory and practice.

“The government developed a set of principles for universities to guide aged care in the undergraduate nursing curriculum, but there is little evidence to suggest they were adopted.  

Geriatricians remain third cousins to cardiologists and surgeons; aged care nurses are paid far less than those working in acute care.”

“Not all the news is bad – the Victorian Government is supporting a great initiative to attract doctors into geriatric medicine, for example – but much more needs to be done,” Nay said.