US physicians recruited to keep demented drivers off the road
Doctors in the US are being enlisted nationwide to help get dangerous, ageing drivers off the road, especially those suffering from dementia or other cognitive impairments.
With the surge of baby boomers now entering their 60s, more drivers are on the road who may have thinking impairments linked to ageing.
Researchers at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other key centers nationally have developed a three-hour workshop to train health care providers to identify potentially unsafe drivers with dementia and to encourage appropriate retirement from driving.
“We don’t want to give the message that older drivers are always unsafe, because that’s just not the case,” says Thomas Meuser, Ph.D., research associate professor of neurology at Washington University. “But there are health-related changes associated with aging, including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, that impair medical fitness to drive.”
In a recent issue of the journal ‘Gerontologist’, Meuser and colleagues reported on the effects of their workshop after presentations to health professionals in seven Missouri locations, including a number of rural cities with large elderly populations.
Debate is ongoing about when in the progression of dementia a patient driving becomes an almost certain danger. Most US states don’t have specific prohibitions in this regard, but all states allow health professionals and others to report individuals perceived as medically unfit to drive due to dementia or other conditions. In 2001, the American Academy of Neurology recommended that persons diagnosed with mild dementia stop driving for reasons of personal and public safety.
