A study from Ontario health records which
was published in today’s New England
Journal of Medicine found that when doctors warned patients not to drive
(because of fears the doctors had about those patients’ abilities to drive due
to chronic illness) resulted in a significant drop in the number of severe MVAs
(those resulting in admission to an ER) those patients were involved in.
Ergo, doctors should warn more patients
about not driving.
I have a concern about this conclusion,
though.
Although age by itself was but one of the
factors doctors used in deciding to whom to issue those driving warnings (chronic
diseases all tend to rise with age, after all), and although in this study, a
significant number of warnings were also issued to younger drivers, in part, of
course because the prevalence of chronic illness is rising rapidly among young
people largely because of their sedentary lifestyles, poor diets, and excess
weights, I am still certain that if this study results in changed guidelines
about driving limits, because so many doctors – and the health care system in
general - have an underlying ageist bias (doctors are younger, often much, much
younger than their patients, after all, so it’s understandable that so many
doctors simply can’t put themselves in their patients’ shoes), these new warnings will be issued
disproportionately to older drivers, and limiting someone’s capacity to drive,
whether that limit is self-imposed or not, can dramatically impact someone’s
life negatively.
