Combating ageism in medical education with narrative medicine

ABSTRACT

Ageism is common in medical trainees and difficult to overcome. The My Life, My Story program has been shown to be an effective tool for increasing empathy. We explored its use as an instrument for combating ageism by implementing it in a Geriatrics clerkship for fourth year medical students. During our evaluation, 151 students interviewed patients about their lives using a semi-structured question guide. Students completed the UCLA Geriatrics Attitudes Scale and the Expectations Regarding Aging Survey pre-and post-clerkship. We also facilitated 9 student debriefs and 5 faculty interviews. After completing My Life, My Story, students were more likely to disagree with “I would rather see younger patients than elderly ones” and “it’s normal to be depressed when you are old”. In qualitative analysis of the debriefs, we identified a key summative theme: “impact of the intervention on care teams”. Within that, we describe three subthemes: an awareness of richness of the lives led by older people, their current value to society, and the social determinants of health they have faced. After participating in My Life, My Story, students’ attitudes toward aging changed. A narrative medicine program using life stories can be a practical tool for addressing ageist stereotypes.

KEYWORDS:

• Narrative medicine
• ageism
• social determinants of health
• geriatrics
• older adults

Acknowledgements

An earlier draft of this work was presented as an abstract at the American Geriatric Society Conference in 2023 (Morgan, Demers, Young, & Jindal 2023).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/02701960.2024.2302594

Additional information

Funding

“This material is the result of work supported with resources and the use of facilities at the VA Boston Healthcare System, Cincinnati VA Medical Center and the New England Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States government.”