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Reversing Disability in Old Age

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Handbook of Diversity Issues in Health Psychology

Part of the book series: The Plenum Series in Culture and Health ((PSCH))

Abstract

In his autobiographical novel, House of God, medical resident Samuel Shem (1978) described the tendency of physicians in his hospital to call the old patients “gomers.” The term gomer (or “gome” for short), Shem explains, serves as an acronym for “Get Out of My Emergency Room.” The phrase implies than old patients will be annoying and that their health will inevitably decline with a variety of age-related complications. Although Shem wrote his novel in 1978, some hospital house staff still refer to people over the age of 60 as gomes. The doctors who use the term gome would defend themselves by pointing out that the term is said tongue in cheek and that they would never use the term in the hearing vicinity of an old patient. We will argue in this paper, however, that the use of the term represents a kind of thinking and behavior that has negative consequences for the health of old people.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division on Aging, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, 02115

    Becca Levy

  2. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138

    Ellen Langer

Authors
  1. Becca Levy
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  2. Ellen Langer
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford University, Stanford, California

    Pamela M. Kato  & Traci Mann  & 

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© 1996 Plenum Press, New York

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Levy, B., Langer, E. (1996). Reversing Disability in Old Age. In: Kato, P.M., Mann, T. (eds) Handbook of Diversity Issues in Health Psychology. The Plenum Series in Culture and Health. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-27572-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-27572-7_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-45325-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-0-585-27572-7

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