070 Chapter 5 Impact of the age awareness workshop I felt like [the workshop] was that jolt, that reset to remind you … Sometimes you’re so busy doing the things that you do that you don’t stop and actually think about what you’re doing … It [the workshop] was about keeping those important things top of mind when you’re doing things. —Participant, age 43 It was good to get a refresher because it triggers things in your own thought processes. We all get into routines with our work, especially because we’re so busy. It’s just a constant pressure to churn through the workload. So yeah, it’s good to have things fresh, because when you fall into those routines, that’s when you start to fall back on things you hear from other people around you. You can start to use terminology and phraseology that you hear around you [that] isn’t necessarily good and you might not even realise it. That session was good because I came away thinking, ‘Oh I heard someone on the ward say that to that lady and I didn’t say anything’ or ‘I nearly called someone that term of endearment’. It helped me to sort of refocus, refresh, and have things on my mind a bit more for when I’m interacting with people. —Participant, age 40–51 It was more ‘just keep monitoring yourself, checking yourself’. Fundamentally I think I treat everyone respectfully and equitably. It was just maybe a little bit of language and where it’s the softer stuff that’s not so overt … just to watch that stuff. There was no light bulb moment of, ‘Oh, I’ve been really discriminatory or really patronising, or thinking someone’s less capable’, [because] I never have. There wasn’t a big shift. It was about watching some of the softer stuff. —Participant, 52–60 years 5.9 Groups who would benefit from the workshop All participants stated they would recommend the workshop to others, regardless of how much they found it useful for themselves. Participants identified diverse groups they thought would benefit from the workshop, ranging from aged care workers, healthcare providers, public servants and policymakers to high school students and anyone who works with or provides services to older adults, as well as older individuals themselves. I think [the workshop] would be really good across the aged care sector … people in IT, in admin, in allocations, all different roles. —Participant, age 40–51 I would love to see [the workshop] rolled out in hospitals, GP practices … make it open to the whole public health system, because how many times do they say [in the health system] to not do something because the person is too old or it’s too risky and forget about the actual person. —Participant, mixed age group