"Patient advocates note that commercial pilots, who are also responsible for the safety of others, must retire at 65 and must undergo physical and mental every six months starting at 40. Yet "the profession of medicine has never really had an organized way to measure physical competency ...." Source Leaving aside government jobs, most professions do not have a suggested retirement age. Should medicine be an exception? It is necessary and fair to require doctors to prove ability to practice beyond a certain age? Why do doctors protest age based testing? Stanford requires a clinical and physical assessment for physicians 75 or older. This article describes how Stanford doctors protested against it, called it age discrimination, and flatly refused to take the required mental test (which was then abandoned, though the physical test remains in place). What do you think?
I think policies like the Stanford one (practitioners 75 or older must go through a physical exam, cognitive screening and peer assessment of their clinical performance every 2 years) is fair enough. I am not sure these tests are sufficient.
doctors in clinical private practice "slow down" as they age. Work only a day or two in a week. In older age, exchanging their time on the earth for taxable income might seem like a bad idea to many. To doctors and non-doctors alike. The doctors can browse the quizzes on Medscape and see if they can come to a correct diagnosis, and keep themselves sharp. And many non-doctors can also do that. And then, there is malpractice insurance premiums; the insurance industry would have an incentive to keep the 75+ physicians as sharp as they can be; otherwise the doctors would be working only to pay these premiums, as well as screw up on their patients. Perhaps the CA doctors were thinking of all these self-monitoring mechanisms in their profession when they deemed some outside test to be unnecessary ?
@Rihana Everyone who could hurt others physically, emotionally, socially, psychologically and economically should undergo vigorous reflex and cognitive tests that would measure their competence to perform as a professional. Like continuing education, the professionals also should have competence tests periodically irrespective of their age. One can never predict the happenings in a professional's life. If a professional NFL football player could shoot someone and if a professional singer could die out of overdose of medication, any professional could hurt anyone or himself. Even these competency tests should go through periodic reviews in order to take care of changes and properly measure the competency of professionals from time to time. Viswa
Well, slow down is to accommodate their energy levels and maybe they want to do other things like travel, hobbies, or nag kids to have grandchildren. Question is about their alertness and quality of work in how many ever days per week they practice. Self-monitoring or peer-monitoring can only help till the first time the doctor goofs up and it is due to age related causes.
Wouldn't that be overkill and include a large portion of people who work with other people? It would include educators, for example, and they are ones who least need a retirement age?
Under one of the articles quoted in the first post, there was a short comment that said before turning 60, people should find a doctor 20 or 25 years younger than them. Solid advice. I started to look into this topic when our family physician in India turned 70 plus along with my parents and I saw a slow decline in his ability to diagnose and understand what the patient needed/wanted. He is nearing 80 and still practicing. Extended family relatives say he just changes the medicines around a little bit each time, but family is fida over him. Hard to argue with the 30-40 years of the history they share as patient/doctor. One can but watch silently and build up on the serenity to accept what cannot be changed. It does make sense to look for a good doctor who is 20 or so years younger than oneself. More so, if family (spouse, child, children's spouses) are going to be very involved in your care and medical decisions when you are very old.
If you read it carefully, I didn't restrict the competence test for retirees only and it should apply to everyone irrespective of their age. Yes. I strongly believe even educators need to go through competency test. While vast majority of them impact the lives of young kids positively, some create substantially negative impact in their lives. When I visited my son's high school in 2002, I noticed vast majority of the teachers had outstanding academic background but later I came to know that they were not good teachers at all. Viswa
