Aging stereotypes among health professionals in Chile: an exploration in pandemic times

Abstract

This article evaluates the explicit negative and positive stereotypes about aging among health professionals considering the presence of COVID-19. The context of structural inequalities for older people made the pandemic a promoter of those precarizations, which is relevant to consider for further studies. This research is descriptive and cross-sectional, with 378 surveys answered in May 2020, 308 health professionals from Chile were evaluated. The Aging Image Scale (Levy et al., 2004) was used, after cross-cultural validation and evaluation of the metric properties for this context, which generated the construction of an index. The results show that health professionals have a specific image of aging, highlighting positive stereotypes (capable, active, wise, positive, caring, family-centered) over negative stereotypes (wrinkled, slow walking and sick). It is concluded that there are some indicators of age discrimination among health professionals, according to the attributes of those who responded. Thus, useful information is provided on discrimination against the ageing population in Chile during the pandemic.