IIE IDEAL Podcast: Episode 5
IIE IDEAL Podcast: Episode 5
We Are All Aging
Guest Speakers: Ida Earner, NP (She/Her), Leanne Rorick (She/Her), and David Steitz, PhD (He/Him)
Recording Date: July 9th, 2024
[Announcer]
We acknowledge with respect the Seneca Nation known as the Great Hill People and keepers of the western door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. We take this opportunity to thank the people on whose ancestral lands The University of Rochester currently resides in Rochester, New York. To learn more about ancestral lands. Upon which we live and work. Please check out native-land.ca
[Dennis Carr]
We're here today creating this podcast for the Ideal Committee here at the U of R in the Institute for Innovative Education. Which is a group of departments within the University Medical Center. And we're talking about ageism. And I'm going to have each of our guests introduce themselves, starting with Leanne.
[Leanne Rorick]
Hi, Dennis. Thank you for having me. I'm Leanne Rorick, and I am co-director of the Monroe County Aging Alliance. The Alliance is a joint initiative of the United Way of Greater Rochester in the Finger Lakes and the Rochester Area Community Foundation.
[Dennis Carr]
And David.
[David Steitz]
I am David Steitz. I am a professor of psychology at Nazareth University. I'm also the director of our gerontology program. And co-director of our spiritual care program. And I'm also a member of the Monroe County Aging Alliance.
[Dennis Carr]
And Ida.
[Ida Earner]
Hi, I am Ida Earner. I'm a board-certified acute care nurse practitioner working with the University of Rochester geriatrics group as a nurse practitioner clinically. I also serve as community engagement liaison for the UR Aging Institute. I also serve as vice chair for CEI and for U of R, equity in clinical care.
[Dennis Carr]
Welcome. Welcome, all three of you. And thank you for coming and to help us illuminate this idea of Ageism.
[David Steitz]
Thank you.
[Dennis Carr]
Leanne, can you give us a… The definition of ageism and sort of how it manifests itself in the workplace.
[Leanne Rorick]
Sure, sure. Thanks for having me. Ageism, the way that we define it is any prejudice or discrimination based on a person's age. It's as simple as that. It arises when age is used to categorize and divide people in ways that lead to harm and disadvantage and even injustice. And it can take many forms, including prejudicial attitudes, discriminatory acts. And even institutional policies and practices that perpetuate these stereotypical beliefs about people of certain ages. And, you know, the factors that contribute to this Where we see that age groups are more susceptible to ageism. First, the cultural norms that we hold. Older people, even in the fairy tales that we grew up with, were ugly and mean and they looked very frail and decrepit. And so, we hold on to some of those cultural norms, particularly about older people, because that's one of the things that we grew up with. And then we continued those cultural norms as we got older, making jokes about being over the hill on our birthdays and such. So those cultural norms lead to more ageism. The lack of intergenerational interaction and just being familiar with people of other ages can perpetuate that. The fear of aging itself can perpetuate ageism. And even ignorance and the lack of awareness about what other what people of other generations are capable of. And what they experience. So, some of those things can perpetuate more ageism and they can trickle into the workplace. We all carry our own biases. Unfortunately, about people of other ages. And we carry that into our workplace.
[Dennis Carr]
Anything to add to that, David?
[David Steitz]
Well, I think Leanne used a really good word. It's our experiences. And what working on now and studying and learning from my students is that it's just it's a lack of experience and understanding and understanding really what aging involves and entails. It's a lack of having positive examples in our lives. That we can draw upon in terms of our own aging that we do at any point in our lives.
[Dennis Carr]
And so Particularly in the workplace, but in all aspects, how does this typically come up? What are the sort of things that you encounter regularly in your work?
[Ida Earner]
I'll touch on that. So, you know, it creates this unintentional ageism, so this implicit bias. So, for example, in the healthcare system we see a lot of subconscious negative judgments or assumptions and attitudes about things. So as a geriatric nurse practitioner, sometimes we will have a discussion about a patient who was recently diagnosed with cancer. And if it's an older adult Sometimes the provider or even a family member may say, well, Mom or dad, would you want to get cancer treatment at your age? And things like that that I know are not intended to be offensive or lacking compassion, but unintentionally, and this is something where subconsciously people don't even realize they're doing it. They're just making assumptions that a person no longer has quality or the same type of quality because they're older now. And that's not appropriate.
[Dennis Carr]
Do you think that, well, how does this impact people's mental and physical health? Just for an example, I see it as sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy that if you if you reinforce the idea, these ideas, people begin to take them on as their own identity. Which is not great. What do you think about that? I'll start with just bringing up something called the individualism trap because it's this idea that, you know, these are lifestyle choices. So, if I just did better with my healthy eating or exercise more, then that's all I needed to do to have different outcomes. But I'll let Leanne continue with that.
[Leanne Rorick]
Sure, sure. And I'm with Ida on that one you know we tend to tell ourselves that aging is something that we can do something about, and we want to we want to try to fix it and tell ourselves that we can, you know, if we just ate healthier, if we just did this or that, it would be better. But the ageism itself that we experience through our lives can affect our health, our mental and our physical to your point, Dennis. And there's been some research about this and particularly how it affects our mental health. So, ageism might be responsible for about 6 million cases of depression worldwide, according to one research study. And it can also lead to negative self-perceptions of aging. So, you know. That negatively impacts cognitive abilities like memory, even if with brief exposure to some type of negative messaging. We call it the stereotype threat, right? I know that I'm young and somebody's bashing me because I'm young and eventually that's going to impact my mental health. And particularly with older people too, but also with younger people. And I think it's important that, you know. Many of us work in the aging space, meaning with older people, but ageism can be very much felt by younger people. We hear a lot of what I had a workplace I was recently chatting with talk to me about millennial bashing. Where younger people in a workspace uh can be associated incorrectly with all of those negative stereotypes about younger people. And what I mean by that are those younger people stereotypes that they're lazy, they're disrespectful, they're selfish. They're entitled. And that's just not fair to place stereotypes like that on an entire generation. Yes, that generation experiences specific things that impact them through their lives, but it's not fair of us to identify an entire generation in such a negative way. On the health side, we also see increased social isolation and loneliness that can be cause by ageism. Social rejection from others is something that older people face. They're not invited to tables because they're older. You're retired. You don't need to be here anymore. And that can really contribute. To older people feeling more isolated and becoming more lonely. And we also see in research that ageism can lead to a decreased quality of life and even premature death. And I know that sounds pretty drastic. But people with a positive view of their own aging live seven and a half years longer. And younger people with negative views of aging are two times more likely to experience cardiovascular events even 40 years later in their life. So, these are our imprinted ageist views that impact our health even many, many years later.
[David Steitz]
I think Leanne makes a really good point. It's important to think about these health outcomes in terms of the individual. But then speaking as a psychologist, as an instructor, it's also important that we think about how our physicians and our therapists are being trained There's just tons of research out there that talks about how individuals show a preference against working with older adults. That they assume worse prognoses for older adults. That even therapists think that depression is just a natural part of aging. And when you go into any sort of therapeutic relationship with an individual and you're trying to build trust with an individual and you already have those sort of implicit ideas kicking around in your mind. Of, course it's going to influence how you're going to interact with this individual and the language you're going to use with the individual.
[Dennis Carr]
Ida, is this… a prevalent problem in healthcare. You work with a lot of healthcare providers. And do you find a bias among some of your colleagues in treating older patients?
[Ida Earner]
I definitely do, but I will say that working with The University of Rochester Aging Institute and because we're now being trained in a way that looks at healthcare from an age-friendly perspective, really focusing on what matters to our patients, you know, their mobility, that they be social. We review medications, but really focusing on what matters to them. That is one of the things that we're doing and addressing things like the statistics that show that cardiovascular disease, diabetes, things like that, especially among groups that are… in different psychosocial or financial um you know just disparities that are facing disparities. It's important to go to those areas. And educate and provide health talks, which is what we're doing with some local communities. Going in as a university and saying, you know, we want to help bring education about cardiovascular disease, about diabetes. I've been fortunate enough to be able to do that even in a community where I grew up. Daughter of migrant workers. So, it's important that we go to those places, overcome barriers such as language, you know. Language access is very a huge barrier for people having equity with their ability to have health care. And so that's one of our focuses is going and addressing, in an age-friendly manner, providing education to all people in all communities.
[David Steitz]
And for those health concerns that Ida talked about, a recent study just a few years ago show that ageism in the United States costs our healthcare industry about $63 billion with a B. In terms of the views that our physicians have toward older adults and then individuals sort of thinking that they don't have the same level of control or power over their health outcomes.
[Dennis Carr]
Personally, you know, working here at the university with a very wide range of people in the library. You know from undergraduate student workers here through medical students, nursing students, dental students, all sorts of graduate programs right through the providers into the area of some pretty elderly faculty members. And the lesson that I come away with after a lot of years of this is that…Ability is not tied to age. You know, I’ve seen some of the youngest undergraduate students come in here and be super competent and others not so much. And every point on that age continuum, I find people that are extremely competent, others not so much. But it's not tied to age if that's the lesson I've learned here. I think that's a good one. It illustrates what we're talking about. How do we combat this thing? What can colleagues do to combat ageism and promote a more inclusive work environment?
[Leanne Rorick]
I'll answer that for us. I'm just a little bit and see if my colleagues have any other things to add. Some of the things that we look at are being inclusive completely. So, this isn't just about age. Age is only one way a workspace or a workforce can show inclusivity, but there are other ways that we can be welcoming not only in our hiring practices, but in our practices to promote. To provide professional development. That should include everyone in the workforce. We can also ensure as employers, supervisors, workplaces that benefits and opportunities are equitable. And again, this isn't just benefits in the same way that we think of as normal benefits like healthcare coverage, but you know is there a childcare policy and an elder care policy, for example? And when we look at opportunities being equitable, again, are those professional development opportunities available to everyone? Are people being forced out or accepted when they reach that retirement age? This is a very common ageist perception that many of us have, you know, we all get to think, okay, I'm Medicare eligible now. I'm 65. I should start thinking about retirement. The truth is that with our longer lives and we are living longer in longevity, people are working longer as well. And so, you know, inviting and welcoming everyone, regardless of their age and not assuming they're going to retire is really, really important. And of course, creating multi-generational teams. Notice I didn't say intergenerational. We're using that word very intentionally now, multi-generational teams. So that people of all experience, not just age, but experience. Can share in the workspace. And all of these experiences and things that we come to the workplace with can create more, a team with more creativity. And a team that is going to learn more and do more and be more effective in the workplace than just one team of people of all of the same generation, for example. So intentionally creating these opportunities for people with less experience to learn from those with more experience. And really honoring those with more experience is important. And I like to poke in just that at the Aging Alliance, we are working with the National Center to Reframe Aging about how we can change our language when it comes to aging so that people are more accepting and try to rid themselves of some of that implicit bias that we all hold those stereotypical beliefs that we have a tough time because of all those cultural norms letting go of. But really looking at communication styles and making sure that communication styles within the workforce are appropriate for people of all abilities and all ages. Sometimes a particular work team might find that they use Microsoft Teams to communicate best with one another. Another team might prefer email. Another team might prefer stand-up meetings. Another team might prefer a little bit of all of those things. But really working within the team that you have and across the communication styles of everyone on your team is important. And it's a little more age friendly when it comes to some people that might be less tech savvy than others. Notice I didn't say older people that might be less tech savvy than others. Some of the older people I work with are more tech savvy than the younger people I work with. So, we're going to get rid of that. That horrible stereotype and really just think about abilities and experiences and work with folks in the workplace.
[Ida Earner]
We really saw that come alive during the pandemic, so um I worked in critical care for many years, first as a bedside nurse and then as a nurse practitioner in the university. During the pandemic when we were very short on nurses, and obviously there were a lot of critically ill people, that was a time when the university reached out to nurses, critical care nurses that had previously either…Some retired or some had gone to different places like a lot of nurses do during their career. And they saw them as the most experienced and knowledgeable And especially with these critically ill people and many of them came back to the ICU. And brought that knowledge, that wisdom to help support the younger nurses that weren't as experienced, and I mean younger as in the amount of training that they've had, not an age. But the less experienced ones, and they rock and rolled. They really made it very clear that this was not about age. It was about wisdom, experience, and being leaders. And it was a very clear message to all of society that we need our older adults.
[David Steitz]
And I think the two of you kind of you hit on it a little bit in the sense that It's just a trajectory. It's just a spectrum. It's not an us versus them. It's not a dichotomy. It's not a young versus old. It's not about abled and disabled. It's just thinking about it across a spectrum of individuals. And I think the other point that's important is we just generally fear what we don't know and what we don't understand. And we don't know how we're going to age. We don't know what that's going to look like for us at any point in our lives. And then when we have that fear and that apprehension about ourselves, it's very easy then to apply it to other individuals. And it becomes even more easy to do that when you simply just don't have the experience and exposure to people of different ages, races, ethnicities, abilities. You know, I ask my students in the beginning of the semester. You know, we talk about different sort of living options for individuals. And I pose the question what percent of older adults live in nursing homes or skilled nursing homes? And they often started about 70 or 80 percent It's typically every semester where we're at. And it takes me a while to whittle them down to what that number actually is. And my classes are actually held in a senior living community, and I have to meet with the students ahead of time to make sure they don't say we're going to a nursing home now. Because the individuals living in independent care, just in a cottage and an apartment doing their thing that they want to do every day. They don't want to be viewed or thought of as being in a nursing home. Because to them, that means that there are some significant changes that have occurred physically, cognitively that they now have to address and deal with and cope with on a daily basis. So, they have that own level of fear in them. And when they see a group of 20-year-olds come in and start saying, oh, this is an amazing nursing home. Then we have to spend a half an hour unpacking that, thinking, well, why do you think that's what this is? And why do you think just because you're older, you live in a nursing home now? Where does that come from? And it just comes back to we don't know. We don't have experience with this. I don't know what to think or expect, but we just rely on sort of those assumptions that are ingrained in us.
[Leanne Rorick]
Yeah, I will say to tag on to what David just explained that's This isn't something that it's just his students or just that generation or just…The World Health Organization tells us that one in two of us hold some of these ageist thoughts. This isn't unique. And we don't like to play the blame game, as David mentioned. It's more about educating and helping people to understand that ageism is not, or age is not something to be feared. While we know that some of the old theories that I've heard researchers talk about how the discuss theory is tied to the theory of fear and death. And it's very similar to the fear in aging, which is pretty sad. But we have to take, we have to own that. We have to recognize that this is something we need to change. And start honoring all of us of all ages and get rid of some of that ageism so that we can make the most out of one another and our relationships.
[Ida Earner]
And that can be hard when we look at society just images that we see. When we see things, you know, when you have greeting cards that make fun of people that are getting older, and you know. If it's something that is a crisis situation. Somebody is frail. They no longer can do X, Y, or Z. Those are the images that are out. In the communities and social media, et cetera, things like the anti-ageism marketing, you know, for creams and, you know, against wrinkles or gray hair or things like that. It's hard to get everybody on board when all around us society is creating these negative images about people as they age.
[Dennis Carr]
There's you know there's this term “age-appropriate” you know to treat people in an age-appropriate manner. Or there's even a commercial on right now for one of the senior communities where they say. Or the sort of the tagline is “act your age.” And their point is that that doesn't mean what most people think. This kind of seems like there's kind of a fine line between treating somebody in an age-appropriate manner or, you know, where that kind of can easily trail into some sort of discriminatory behavior. How does that come up? How do we deal with that? It's a hard question, isn't it? Yeah, age appropriate I find that myself, you know, that there are things that I do now or don't do now. That maybe I did a few years ago. I mean, I'm not 100. I'll be 70 in six months but uh six months I think there's something real about that “age appropriate,” but it's easy for that to go bad. What do you think?
[Leanne Rorick]
I'll say, I'll take that one and just say that you know, our new mantra at the Aging Alliance is “We are all aging.” So, if we look at the fact that we are all aging. Either from the time you're born or long before that and some of us believe, you know, aging starts when those cells start to reproduce, right? And we continue to age until we stop aging, which is death. Which is sometimes a young age and sometimes old age But we are collectively all aging. So, I know I tell this story all the time. I'm a big heavy metal concert fan and heavy metal music fan And I have enjoyed that type of music since I was an early teenager. And I'm going to continue enjoying that music probably until the time that I die. I just saw Godsmack this weekend. I'm 53. I hope that I'm still able to go see him and healthy and I'm going to stay healthy so I can keep going to concerts until I'm gone. I don't think that that's anything age-appropriate. It's a preference. It's something I enjoy. But we get locked into these, we should play bingo when we're older. You hear all these horrible stereotypical comments about what people should or shouldn't be doing as they age. And the truth is when we look at ourselves as individuals. We're going to like the same things we liked our whole age our whole lifespan, most likely. So, we really need to kind of get rid of some of those thoughts. And those are very internal thoughts with all of us. That's some of the internal um thoughts and biases we all need to kind of get rid of and stop looking at older adulthood. As David mentioned with this, we need to get rid of ageism and ableism The truth is there are a lot of people over the age of 67 or 65, I'm sorry, that are not disabled. But we think of older people, and we think of frailty. And instead of using those biases and assumptions, we need to get rid of them. Because the truth is many older people are not living with disability.
[David Steitz]
I'm going to do the thing that I just said we shouldn't do and create sort of a dichotomy because I really can't think of what Age-appropriate means for an older adult. I can't even think of an example of that. I can, in a sense, for a younger adult just in terms of my own experience as a professor, where I know, for example, in an incoming freshman class, I'm going to have 70 students you know around age 18, 19, something like that. Where I can push them, and I do push them. I want them to act in a sense older. I want them to be thinking about being responsible and mature and working well with others in terms of what they're going to look like when they're done at Nazareth in terms of they're now in a job or they're in grad school. So, I don't want to treat them like the 18-year-old that they are, because I still realize developmentally where you're at as an 18-year-old. But there are certain contexts when you do need to push someone and expect that they don't. Just like my kids wish that they could push me harder to not tell dad jokes. And maybe they would say you need to act more your age, but it's my role to embarrass them. And do what I can. And I guess not act my age, whatever that might mean.
[Dennis Carr]
I want to just throw in here, here at the Miner Library. Three years ago, I think one of our librarians retired at the age of 95. She worked until she was 95 years old. And very effectively. And added value here. She had been the director of the library, retired in her mid-60s. Didn't like retirement. So, she got another job. At Harvard. She got an apartment in Boston flew up there on Mondays, flew back on Fridays. And she did that for 18 years. Then she retired from Harvard. Then she didn't like retirement again. So, she came back to work for us. And she worked here until she was 95. Working in our history medicine collection and doing some other things. And once again, very effectively. And I've seen faculty members here who are very effective in what they do. They're writing and they're researching and working into their 90s. And my theory is that if you just never stop doing it…You'll never lose it. Personally, I don't want to be home just putsing around the yard. I think there's a real value. And David, you kind of touched on this, this kind of multi-generational environment if you stay in it. It becomes the norm. If you're living in a, you know, if you retire and live in a 55 and up community that becomes your normal environment. I'm not so sure, at least for me, I'm not so sure that that's what I want. And I think a lot of people that are aging don't really want that. They want to live in a more diverse environment where they're exposed people of all ages.
[Leanne Rorick]
It's interesting that you should say that Dennis, because in some of our research, we put out a community survey right here in Monroe County in 2020 And we did it in advance of the age-friendly livable community plan that we created for the county and the city. And we asked people specifically about housing. You mentioned the 55 community. People told us that it was more important that they had affordable options available to them and less important that they be segregated and some of them use that word segregated and that there were senior living communities that they could live at. While some people enjoy that, and honestly, I know a lot of very active, very, very active retirement communities. While some people want that, others don't. They want that diversity. So, you know, as we look at community planning efforts, we're mindful that sometimes people want inclusion. And want to live among other people. And other times as people age, they do make those choices about retirement options. Both can be active, right? If we changed our perspective about what should happen at a retirement community. Then things might look a little different. So, you know, I'm always pushing whenever I'm talking with retirement communities, you know, what's fun and what's happening at your community? It's not about what should happen there. It's about what the people that are living there want. So. We can change that ourselves.
[Dennis Carr]
So how do we break down some of these attitudes? I mean, I mean. If there was one thing that was one thing you thought would help this? What would that be? Breaking down these attitudes. I know sometimes we're just naturally segregated from at a lot of different ages. I'm a baby boomer and I grew up with grandparents and all sorts of extended family of all ages and I know we live in a sort of a maybe a more transient society where people you know kids grow up, they move someplace else for their careers and maybe they don't have that. That their parents moved the way so they don't they don't have that contact, regular contact with grandparents and aunts and uncles that are of a certain age. How do we get back to that? Or how do we make up for that loss? And I think it is a loss.
[Ida Earner]
I would start by saying that, you know. At least from the university, so from the Aging Institute, it takes institutions to change the culture, to change the way we use age-friendly communication. So that it becomes the new norm. Because I think that, you know, focusing on age-friendly healthcare delivery, age-friendly communication. It takes the level of the institution at the top, starting from the top. To all be on the same page and really start setting that as the standard expectation.
[Leanne Rorick]
I agree with Ida. With one in two people with the World Health Organization reporting to us that one in two people hold ageist views. I think it's incumbent upon us to be very intentional about including age and diversity, equity, and inclusion work. And being very mindful about how we're treating our fellow coworkers, the people that work for us, the people that work with us, the people in our community. We know from the work that we're doing with the National Center to Reframe Aging that just talking to people about the implicit bias that we can hold on to, those unintentional stereotypes that we hold based on no fault of our own, some of the cultural norms we've all grown with. Just talking to people about those biases that they hold can change the way that they think. We can affect change when we talk to people about ageism. So, our goal is to continue to do that through the Aging Alliance and we want others to kind of take this on with us.
[David Stietz]
I think we need to do what we're doing now and multiply it by like a million. I honestly don't know what the right number is. But even as I alluded to earlier that my gerontology courses are taught in a senior living community. We were doing that for 15 years. And even when I talk about it now in a group of individuals who are in some way involved in aging, I still get the, oh, that's amazing or that's so cute. And I think I'm like, yeah, because it's artificial. I have to go out of my way to create these multi-generational experiences so that 18 to 20 somethings can spend some time with the older adults that they're potentially going to at some point be working with or working for as a PT or a social worker or whatever it happens to be. And until it's not artificial anymore, we just go back to possibly how we lived generations ago, where everybody just kind of looked out for everybody, regardless of where you were sort of on your trajectory of age. That’s just what you did. And you didn't think about the us and them, the younger and older. Until it's not artificial anymore, I think we have a pretty large task ahead of us.
[Leanne Rorick]
Agreed, agreed. I go back to the “We are all aging” philosophy too. And when we are ageist, we are being ageist toward our older selves. So, we're being ageist toward one another. We don't realize that you know even some of the research shows that even older people as they get into their later years and their later life still think of old people as those that are older than them or more frail than them. But why do we look at it that way? We collectively, all of us. Are aging. And like David says, we really need to do more so that there aren't these you know small little things that people are doing in our community to be more inclusive. We all need to be more inclusive all the time in our thoughts and in our actions.
[Dennis Carr]
We're sort of you know we're sort of in an era where people are under pressure to enter the workforce earlier. And stay in it later. And how does that affect ageism and our attitudes about ageism? And… I mean, I would think it would make it much more difficult on both ends of that scale.
[Leanne Rorick]
Yeah, those older people among us who are among us who experiencing ageism either to get hired or remain in the workforce We know that at least in our community, many older adults need to work. You know, there's a lot of financial insecurity that comes with not being able to have gainful employment in later years, particularly if someone did not save. And we know that the generations coming into older adulthood now, many of them do not have savings like generations before them. We have a lot of older people that don't have children that need to rely on themselves and paying for care as they get older. They don't have any family that could potentially care for them. And not being able to work longer affects their ability to be able to afford later life. And honestly, our workforce right now is depending upon older people to continue working. We simply have shortages across all sectors. And ageism is going to affect our ability to have a viable workforce. Just like it's going to affect the individuals that need to remain in it for their individual economic security.
[Dennis Carr]
One of my uh one of my best friend’s mothers is a nurse. She still has her nursing license. And in the middle of the pandemic, she was contacted. And they wanted her to help with the vaccine program. And she said, “You realize I'm 94.” And they said, yes, but that's okay. They were willing to hire her. At the age of 94. And to be honest, knowing her, I would be very comfortable with her administering a vaccine to me. She worked at a very high level in nursing and was the editor of a nursing journal, but I thought that was… astounding that that you know because it seems like the attitude is always the other way. So, is there, for each of you, is there a book or a film or something like that, that you would recommend on this topic that sort of illustrates this. The way you would like it illustrated. Or highlights the negative part that you think is negative is important for us to know.
[Leanne Rorick]
I'm a big fan of Tracy Gendron's Ageism Unmasked. So, Tracy is a researcher and an author. She was in…She was here in Rochester a couple years ago, Lifespan of Greater Rochester brought her here for a talk. And ageism unmasked is a very simple way to look at ageism. It's rich with a lot of data, but it's a very easy, quick read. And I put it down And I wanted to pick it back up and read it again immediately. It was to me a very a very brief synopsis, but a very common sense way to look at ageism and how ridiculous it is, to be quite honest.
[David Steitz]
What I find is most useful is part of all the ways that I teach is all about having my students actually reflect on what they're experiencing, what they're taking in. So, I don't necessarily have a recommendation. I agree with Leanne that is a great book. I actually have my students create their own films, do their own interviews, whether even if it's or if it's in more of a documentary kind of style. But I want them to actually think about and have to reflect upon what the experiences are that they're having and the information that's being shared with them by people of a different age. And actually think about what it means for their own lives and how they're going to live and the choices that they're going to make.
[Dennis Carr]
Anything you want to tell us, Ida?
[Ida Earner]
So, there's uh many books, including In the Bible, whether it's Acts, Peter encouraging, likewise, your younger people, submit yourselves to the elders. There’re many references to showing respect to older adults. And it starts from day one in the scripture.
[Dennis Carr]
Sure. My personal experience here I think, you know, I like that, you know, I like this idea seeing people seeing people past a certain age is maybe a resource. But I also see it in the other direction. I see younger people as a resource as well. And it's uh it's I think it's highly useful around here to have people at both ends and everywhere along that age continuum. I think everybody, we're all a product of our experiences and upbringing and whatever. So, the more we're exposed to everybody's all these different experiences that expands each of us.So, um. If there was one once again one piece of advice to use in our day-to-day work in higher education and health care what would that be?
[David Steitz]
I'll just jump in because it's something that you had just said, Dennis, when you talked about younger people being a resource as well. My students still, even after graduating a decade ago, still keep in touch with the elders from St. John's who were in the class with them. They still get together for dinners and over the holidays and spend time with one another. And so many of the elders have talked about what a valuable resource the undergraduate students are for them. In terms of the activities that they can do with them. Just sort of feeling just invigorated and getting out and learning about what they're experiencing every day as a college student or someone back in the workforce. So, it's very reciprocal. I don't like always just thinking about, well, older adults, you know, you hear, they're a source of wisdom and all these other things that we revere and that have a very sort of positive bend, positive perspective. But I like that you point out we shouldn't lose sight of what younger adults can teach us as well in terms of the experiences that they're having or maybe not having. And then that better tells us what we should be doing.
[Ida Earner]
I will say that I think it's important that we all do some self-reflection. And really think about if we do have any subconscious attitudes or thoughts about things. And I think especially as we, you know, I do a lot of work with diversity, equity inclusion for the university and how we approach older adults. How we provide health care for older adults It's important that we start with kind of knowing our own implicit biases and being aware.
[Leanne Rorick]
I'm with Ida on that one as well. I think it's important to really think internally about what we're thinking and why are we thinking that and um you know just look within ourselves and that kind of that golden rule right do unto others. In healthcare, we think about person-centered care and support to patients you know when we look at someone and we're not looking at how old they are. We're looking at them and we need to look more at people and not at age.
[David Steitz]
I'll just do a little self-reflection then and just sort of show that I don't think anyone's really above any of these things that we're talking about. Because before, Dennis, when you were sharing the example of the woman who retired at 95, I initially thought in my head, oh my gosh, that's fantastic. That's so Wonderful. I yearn for the day when I don't have that reaction. And I feel like, oh. Great. That's just what people do. That's just what you can do.
[Dennis Carr]
Yep. I just want to tell you, David, that I sit on a not-for-profit board and one of my fellow trustees is a resident of that that independent living community that your students interact with. And she is about 15 years older than I am. And she's one of our most productive and thought-provoking members. And, you know, we also have a few people that are much younger than I am. You know I…And I'm the chair of the nominating committee. So, I pretty much choose who gets on that board and who doesn't. So, I want to practice what I preach here. But I think it's a healthy thing to have that that long range continuum in age.
[Leanne Rorick]
I agree with you, Dennis. And when we're intentional about including people of all ages on boards like the one that you sit on and at community tables and discussions and activities. We're better for it. We learn from one another. And I know I learned from younger people that I work with. I learned from older people that I work with. I can't imagine only working with people my own age or only being around people my own age or not having friends that are older than me and friends that are younger than me. We all have something to teach one another, and we miss all of those opportunities when we're not intentional about inclusion.
[Dennis Carr]
I agree totally. I don't want to live in an echo chamber.
[Leanne Rorick]
Agreed.
[Dennis Carr]
So, well, I… I think we've touched on some pretty important things here today. Unlike so many other diversity, equity, and inclusion issues, in terms of this one. It's really dangerous to come to any sort of us and them conclusions because we will all be there, eventually. Eventually. It's in our own best interest to be hyper aware of ageism and its effects. So, thank you for joining us today.
[Unison]
Thank you, Dennis.