Changing “Old” Attitudes – Visual Metaphors And Sensory Strategies For Teaching Awareness Of Ageism In Healthcare

Date: 18 October, Saturday | Time: 10:30 - 12:00 | Venue: Academia Room, L1-S3

Speaker: Mr Samson Wong

Programme Description: 
With the increased exposure to age-related health conditions and encounters with frail and vulnerable older patients, medical students may develop the tendency to view ageing negatively.

Negative age-related attitudes in healthcare practitioners might include seeing ageing as a mere frustrating process of decline, infirmity, decay, and personal loss. Literature has shown that these age-related attitudes could manifest as physician’s implicit assumption that older patients be “end-of-life” patients, or therapeutic nihilism.

Negative ageism in healthcare could bias clinical judgment and impair patient-provider relationship. Through socialization, patients might also internalize the age-related assumptions which they experienced, resulting in altered health-related behaviours and damaged self-worth. Age-related biases could also influence medical students’ professional interest in working with older persons and to consider a career relating to geriatrics. In 2021, the WHO has declared the Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030), calling for international action to “change how we think, feel and act towards age and ageing”.

This workshop will explore how a Hong Kong-based medical humanities educator has sought to use 'unusual pedagogies'—from photography to culinary arts—for teaching undergraduate medical students about awareness of ageism in healthcare.

The speaker will include his own critique of a missing link in our existing conceptualization of anti-ageism teaching practices in medical education.

Programme Details: 

Learning Outcome(s)
By the end of this workshop, participants should be able to:

• Identify the definitions and varying types of ageism in healthcare
• Describe how visual pedagogies could be applied to designing anti-ageism educational interventions in health professions education
• Critical appraise the strengths and limitations of the introduced pedagogies
• Reflect upon their own ways of teaching implicit biases in medical education

Workshop evaluation:
Post-session surveys

Target Audience:
Medical, Nursing or other Healthcare Educators in Singapore, or Healthcare Practitioners interested in the topic. 
No prior knowledge/experience is needed.

Maximum number of participants for the programme 
Up to 50