The aging anesthesiologist: Are we asking the right question?

Excerpt

Kahneman,1 a Nobel laureate, recognized that we all have intuitive feelings and opinions about almost everything and it is our natural inclination to believe that we are rarely totally “stumped”. When a satisfactory answer to a complex question is not readily available, a common intuitive human response is to find a related question that is easier to answer. In this issue of the Journal, Baxter et al. 2 address an important topic that relates to the professionalism of anesthesiologists in dealing with age-related decline in clinical performance. The authors offer a “proactive” strategy that hospital departments and practice groups should consider for managing this issue. They identify that many anesthesiologists wish to continue in practice beyond age 65 and that the ability of physicians to self-assess has been found to be inadequate to protect patient safety. We have to ask whether this lack of ability to self-assess is limited to this age group (there is abundant evidence that this shortcoming is not age-dependent) and whether the proposed strategy would be expected to improve overall patient safety. …