Are older doctors better?

According to a piece in the Telegraph today, The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has recently been set up as a government watchdog to deal with problems and it has thrown up some queries about the safety of older doctors.

Apparently the NPSA has seen that older doctors are more likely than younger counterparts to have questions asked about their performance and diagnoses. Doctors over 60 were on average seven times more likely to be queried than those under 40. One fifth of cases reported were to do with colleague reaction. But do skills diminish over time and are we in safe hands?

The argument is that older doctors are not necessarily incompetent, but they are more frequently referred to the NPSA. Reasons include "institutional ageism" where errors or bad judgement by older doctors are seen as signs of infirmity. However, older doctors were trained in different techniques to their younger counterparts. They were trained to think and analyse rather than simply follow procedure and instructions.

The report finds it "insulting to suggest that just because someone is old they are less capable of doing their job." Doctors who have decades of experience will be far more likely to pick up on a diagnosis than a younger doctor who is following a text book word for word. A good doctor will have a broad knowledge and a gut feeling.

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