A critical review of published research literature reviews on nursing and healthcare ageism

Aims and objectives: To establish how common and impactful nursing and healthcare ageism is and whether proven interventions or prevention methods exist. Background: Ageism has been a concern since 1969 when it was first introduced as a concept for social reform. As ageism has been linked to lower quality health services and reduced health care access, it is imperative that healthcare and nursing ageism is prevented or identified and reduced or eliminated. Design: A qualitative narrative review of published research literature reviews using a scoping design to map all published reviews was undertaken. The EBSCO Discovery Service (providing access to articles in 271 databases, including MEDLINE and CINAHL) and Directory of Open Access Journals (providing access to over 9,000 open access journals) were used to find review articles. Using predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria, and limited by English language and peer-review publications, 12 eligible reviews were identified and information from them was systematically identified, assessed and synthesised. Results: The 12 reviews did not provide clear and convincing information to determine how common and impactful nursing or healthcare ageism is, nor what can best be done to prevent or address it. Although each review had value since research literature was collected and discussed on nursing or healthcare ageism, the array of literature search and analysis methods, and diversity in conclusions reached about the evidence is highly problematic. Conclusion: Research literature reviews offering a more balanced perspective and demonstrating greater care in finding and using quality evidence are needed. Relevance to clinical practice: At this point in time, there is no clear understanding of how widespread and impactful nursing or healthcare ageism is, and what can best be done to prevent or address it. Nurses need to be aware that ageism may be common and impactful, and guard against it.