The AMA, which recently voted to develop guidelines and tests to ensure older physicians can still safely treat patients, reports now one in four physicians in the U.S. is over 64 years old.
In the healthcare field, there is no age cutoff for physicians. Yet as the number of senior physicians grows rapidly, many are beginning to ask, 'How old is too old?'
Old age and the fatigue, forgetfulness and worsened eyesight that often come with it are especially at issue for surgeons, as an NPR report highlights. Of all physician specialties, surgery requires fine motor skills, fluid thinking and endurance.
"I think the general public would be very interested to know that [surgeons] don't police [themselves] well as a profession," Mark Katlic, MD, a 63-year-old surgeon at Baltimore-based Sinai Hospital, told NPR. "It often takes a bad complication that hurts a patient before something serious is done."
What makes retirement cutoffs difficult is there really is no one age at which surgeons should retire, and it depends entirely on the individual. Because of this, many hospitals and health systems beat AMA to the punch and already implemented guidelines and tests for their surgeons, according to NPR, such as "The Aging Surgeon Program," which was created by Dr. Katlic at Sinai Hospital, or the "Late Career Practitioner Policy" at Stanford (Calif.) Health.
However, no surgeons have volunteered on their own to enter The Aging Surgeon Program and the Late Career Practitioner Policy has met some backlash from physicians, according to NPR.
While surgeons may not need a specific age cutoff, competency tests will need to become more accepted among physicians to ensure patient safety.
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