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Diamond_Dog

(34,711 posts)
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 03:03 PM Jan 2024

Here's a bold solution to women's health care: Train doctors to listen to women.

At the recent announcement of the White House Initiative on Women's Health Research, President Joe Biden and Jill Biden, who will lead the effort, spoke about "the power of research." President Biden remarked on the imbalance in women's health care as compared with men's. Women cannot get better medical care, they both suggested, without more study on disease in women.

This initiative is a positive step toward understanding disease in women. Unfortunately, it ignores the problem primarily responsible for the imbalance between women’s and men's health care: doctors’ reluctance to take women’s symptoms seriously. That problem arises not from lack of research, but from medical training that encourages doctors to attribute women’s symptoms to their psyches.

First, if gender health care inequity were caused by lack of scientific understanding, the inequity wouldn't be uniform. Women suffering from medical problems that are poorly researched by sex or gender would face more problems than women with conditions that are better researched. The fact is, though, that women face obstructed access to the health care they need, as compared with men, across the spectrum of medical conditions.

In cardiology, for example, researchers have been focused on gender and sex-based inequities for more than 30 years. While scientific understanding has certainly improved during this time, women are now more likely to die of heart attack than men, and more likely to be told during a heart attack that their symptoms are not heart-related. We’re still less likely to receive key cardiac treatments, to be treated seriously by EMTs during a heart attack and to be given electrocardiograms when we arrive at the hospital.

More
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/12/13/white-house-initiative-womens-health-research-jill-biden-symptoms-diane-oleary

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Here's a bold solution to women's health care: Train doctors to listen to women. (Original Post) Diamond_Dog Jan 2024 OP
Yes yes yes Easterncedar Jan 2024 #1
You said it, Easterncedar! Diamond_Dog Jan 2024 #4
I'm sorry...did you say something ? CincyDem Jan 2024 #2
Hi there Cincy, Diamond_Dog Jan 2024 #3
Over 30 years ago I took one of our daughters to the pediatrician and our child was so hysterical that the phylny Jan 2024 #7
Women should always request justaprogressive Jan 2024 #5
Actually my primary care one is a woman and, yes, she listens to me. Wonder Why Jan 2024 #6
This right here! ShazzieB Jan 2024 #8
I will never forget mercuryblues Jan 2024 #9
Men don't listen to us, period Warpy Jan 2024 #10

CincyDem

(6,935 posts)
2. I'm sorry...did you say something ?
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 03:19 PM
Jan 2024

Ok - hopefully you know I jest.

You are 1000% correct. We have a close friend who is a doc and she's been growing her practice like a weed in the rain, all by word of mouth. The single biggest compliment she says she gets from new female patients is "thank god...someone who's finally listening to me".

And from personal experience, add to it age...we changed docs for my mother (at age 88) to our friend because her previous doc had a common diagnosis for virtually everything bothering her..."you're old". W. T. F.

Anyway - couldn't resist harrasing you a little. Go Browns (oh, that hurt but it's still Ohio!).

Diamond_Dog

(34,711 posts)
3. Hi there Cincy,
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 03:56 PM
Jan 2024

The Browns will do their best to make Ohio proud … Lord knows Ohio hasn’t had much to be proud of lately!

I’m glad you found a good listener for your mom’s doc. I can remember my mother throughout her whole life complaining that male doctors were so dismissive. If you were a woman, you got one of two diagnoses for everything … “It’s all in your head” or “Lose some weight.” Even if you took your kid to a pediatrician you got labeled as a “nervous mother”. So now we get “age bashing” too??

I’m glad efforts are being made to remedy this!

Go OHIO!

phylny

(8,585 posts)
7. Over 30 years ago I took one of our daughters to the pediatrician and our child was so hysterical that the
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 05:36 PM
Jan 2024

doctor suggested we go out into the waiting room and he'd observe her. She calmed down and he then said there was no need to hospitalize her (she had a bad stomach bug or something, don't remember) because she was obviously hydrated because of her tears and she oriented herself once away from him. I thanked him for listening to my concerns and he said, "I always listen to a mother or father - they know their child best." He then related a story of when he was a resident and doctors weren't listening to the parent and thought she was making things up. Turned out the child had a brain tumor.

Dr. Anger, University of Chicago Pediatrics in Munster, Indiana. One of the good ones.

Wonder Why

(4,589 posts)
6. Actually my primary care one is a woman and, yes, she listens to me.
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 04:26 PM
Jan 2024

On the other hand, 2 of my 5 specialists are female and don't. Of the 3 males, one does listen. So it's even up for me, a male in my late 70s.

ShazzieB

(18,675 posts)
8. This right here!
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 06:01 PM
Jan 2024
doctors’ reluctance to take women’s symptoms seriously

This is at the heart of SO MANY problems women have with (not just male but also some female) doctors!

mercuryblues

(15,114 posts)
9. I will never forget
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 06:05 PM
Jan 2024

when I had my 2nd heart attack, the Dr in the ER did not take me seriously. Same symptoms, different Doc. I faked having the "typical" male symptoms and the told him to give me some nitro. If I wasn't having a heart attack, it wouldn't fucking hurt me.
I thought my brother was going to fall out of his chair.
I made sure that I mentioned it to my heart Dr. That resident got an earful.

Warpy

(113,130 posts)
10. Men don't listen to us, period
Sat Jan 6, 2024, 06:37 PM
Jan 2024

and since most female doctors were educated by men, it's spilled over into their practice.

I had a patient many years ago, a granny lady who looked like her picture should have been on a package of cookies, who figured this out. I was in the room hanging an IV drug or something and an intern came in. She said something to him, he grunted and put his stethoscope into his ears. When the stethoscope came out, she started to whisper and he leaned just a little closer. She grabbed him by the necktie, looked into his eyes and staredt with "Now you can start listening, you little son of a bitch..." and I knew I was going to laugh so I left fast.

When I went back after a red faced intern almost ran out of that room, I asked "where the hell did that come from?" Turned out she was the first woman in a traditionally male business in the 50s and had done the speak softly and then grab them by the tie for years.

The last doc who refused to listen to me was a woman. I now go to an NP/PhD. She listens.

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