How Much Is One Life Worth? The Right to Equity Healthcare for Improving Older Patients’ Health Infected by COVID-19

Ageism has a tremendous negative impact on elderly persons and society. Discrimination against the elderly is a driver of health and social inequalities. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed new social and health challenges regarding resource scarcity and shortfalls. Under these difficult circumstances,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2020-09, Vol.12 (17), p.6848
Main Authors: Merodio, Guiomar, Ramis-Salas, Mimar, Valero, Diana, Aubert, Adriana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age discrimination
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Discrimination
Health care
Older people
Patients
Social interactions
Sustainability
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Ageism has a tremendous negative impact on elderly persons and society. Discrimination against the elderly is a driver of health and social inequalities. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed new social and health challenges regarding resource scarcity and shortfalls. Under these difficult circumstances, discourses excluding, and discrimination against, older people have aroused. This article gathers evidence on hospital healthcare experiences of older people infected by COVID-19 during the pandemic outbreak in Spain and it analyzes elements that have positively influenced older patients’ perceived health and well-being. We conducted nine qualitative in-depth interviews in Madrid—one of the regions of Spain most affected by COVID-19—with older people that were hospitalized and recovered from COVID-19, family members of old patients infected with COVID-19, and nurses that attended infected older patients. Findings show the challenging experiences faced by older people who were hospitalized due to COVID-19, on the one hand, and the relevance of transformative aspects related to family relationships, solidarity actions, and humanized care that overcame age discrimination, favoring social and equity healthcare for the elderly on the other hand.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su12176848