Emma Soames
So it is with some reluctance that over the past few months I have come to the conclusion that there seem to be high levels of institutional ageism at work in the NHS. In the wake of the publication of the Equality Bill, stories have been emerging of truly blatant age discrimination.
For instance, Joy Matthews’s husband led an active life despite suffering from Parkinson’s disease. However, while he was in hospital near Caerphilly she was approached by a consultant who implied that because Mr Matthews was very old and his quality of life poor, the hospital was "going to let nature take its course". Mrs Matthews then explained that, when not suffering from a hospital-induced infection, his quality of life was excellent and that he had even asked for his laptop to be brought to him in hospital – "and from then on they pulled out all the stops".
Understandably, Mrs Matthews was astounded at what the consultant told her and she warns that other elderly people may be at risk if they do not have someone to speak up for them.
Elsewhere, researchers from the Mayday University Hospital in Croydon, south London, have found that some NHS stroke units don’t treat older stroke victims in the same way as younger people, who were five times more likely to be given brain scans than elderly patients and "significantly" more likely to be given advice on avoiding another stroke.
In the wake of this report, Dr David Oliver, a senior lecturer on elderly care medicine at Reading University, went public with shocking observations of NHS staff attitudes: "Most of your patients are stuck in bed waiting to die or go to nursing homes,” he was told by a trainee Sister who evidently didn’t think it worth her while to learn how to care for them. Oliver concluded “While the care of the elderly should be a priority in the NHS, too often it is marginalised, neglected and left to play second fiddle to sexier areas of medicine."
Ageism is nasty and insidious, but surely it should not be allowed to be life-threatening?
The three certainties of life include death, but in an age when incredible treatments are available to save life, it seems that younger people are more likely to be offered them. The rights of the individual are now alarmingly close to being overruled in favour of the NHS. But while we can give up naughty pursuits such as smoking or eating too much, we cannot prevent ourselves ageing.
Is it a politically correct misdemeanour to age? Unless we all shout loud and clear, unless we support ageing relatives in their battle to get good treatment from the NHS, it seems that being older is fast becoming a crime – or at least a treatment-denying condition. Older people are the heaviest users of the NHS and this may be time-consuming, expensive and inconvenient. But if it abandons us when we need it most, then the NHS fails one of the most fundamental tests of a humane and civilised society.
Let’s not allow them to get away with it. The Department of Health has set up a review body to look at how the NHS should implement the new Equality Bill. So it’s a good time to speak up – and perhaps we can help revise some attitudes. If you believe that you or a loved one has suffered from ageist treatment within the NHS, write to the chairman of the equality review panel, Sir Ian Carruthers, and send a copy to us (see below). We will deliver the letters to the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson. To quote Churchill: Up with this we will not put.
It’s not a new phenomenon for politicians to look after themselves in well-feathered nests, though doing it at our expense may be.
In the recently published census of 1911 (at www.findmypast.com), you can see how many domestic staff government members employed to keep themselves fed and watered.
Asquith had 19 staff living in No 10 Downing Street to look after his family of five and the entertaining that goes with that address. His household included three of every domestic sort: ladies’ maids, kitchen maids and footmen, as well as a butler, a cook and a housekeeper. Churchill, then a Minister of State, had eight servants at his home at Eccleston Square. Lloyd George made do with four at his home in Wales.
None of them, I note, employed a live-in spin doctor. Did the Damien McBrides of the day live out? More likely, they were not seen as a vital component of the political or domestic life of a premier. And if employed at all, they certainly lived out – in a snakepit.
AGEISM: Write to Sir Ian Carruthers, South West Strategic Health Authority, South West House, Blackbrook Park Avenue, Taunton TA1 2PX. Send copies to Saga Magazine, Enbrook Park, Folkestone CT20 3SE and mark your envelope "NHS Ageism".
This article was first published in the June 2009 edition of Saga Magazine.