Why don’t Doctors deal with impaired older drivers?
One may ask why are Doctors not dealing with the impaired older driver?
In Australia it is not compulsory to deal with the impaired elderly driver!
How to stop older person from driving?
Doctors are very reluctant to deal with the issue for fear of medical complaints against them if they confront an unsuspecting elderly patient about cancelling their driving licence.
Doctors are also fearful of damaging the Doctor-patient relationship.
There is also enormous pressure from the patient and the relatives to keep older people driving on the road.
In fact many Doctors still believe that it is safe to drive a car even with early Alzheimer’s Dementia and do not recommend licence cancellation.
I studied this issue in a survey of General Practitioners' (Primary Care Physicians) attitudes to older drivers on the NSW Central Coast. Australian Journal on Aging V21: 2: 2002 p 98-100. (Ref 24). I surveyed 275 GPs with regard to their attitudes to older drivers.
Of concern, 61% of GPs allowed an older driver with mild Alzheimer's disease to still drive a motor vehicle.
21% of GPs would allow the frail medically unfit driver to still drive with a restricted licence locally if there was no public transport nearby.
Only 41% of GPs thought they had enough training to make an appropriate medical driver assessment.
Only 29% of GPs routinely ask about driving habits and medical fitness to drive in all of their older patients.
Over 55% of GPs felt that there should be another medical body to oversee all medical driver assessments rather than the GP to protect them from damaging the Doctor/patient relationship and complaints.
For more information read Dr Peter Lipski’s book “Your Elderly Parents Failing Health. Is It Ageing Or A Treatable Condition”.