Combating agism in health care on a bio-medical model,48 the need to address the holistic care needs of this client group must be recognized.
Legislation is advocated to eradicate agism with respect to the resuscitation status of older people.
The agism that currently seems to be an inherent part of the clinical trial process could be tackled legislatively.
Agism is the discriminatory concept which defines older people as different from the rest of society.
The issue of service refusal then becomes interwoven with broader s ociocultural contexts, not least t he ideology of agism.
Choices and opportunities are cut adrift as the wedge of agism is hammered into place (on one's 65-year birthday, for example).
The wedge of agism reduces older people to physiologic machines and reduces medicine to a commodity bought and sold, practised in a mechanical format,3 devoid of humanistic qualities.
Agism in the form of age-based health care allocation fosters the separation of the physiological part of a patient from the person who is the patient.
