airyairyquitecontrary:
officialaphnetherlands:
ancientnorthmartian:
“Doctors who spent years studying the human body”
Do you mean doctors who spent years learning about abled white cis men’s bodies
do you know anything about the world besides what you read on tumblr
Actually, a lot of doctors are not given sufficient training in the care of people with various disabilities, treatment of different ethnic groups, treatment of intersex and transgender patients, and even cisgender women unless they seek these topics out as specialities. There are medical schools that don’t even offer training in how to perform abortions, for instance.
Just to grab one very noteworthy example, black patients are less likely to receive pain relief than white ones.
(Undertreatment of Pain More Common Among African-American Patients Than Whites) ”Undertreatment of pain among African Americans has been well documented. For example, children with sickle-cell anemia (a painful disease that occurs most often among African Americans) who presented to hospital emergency departments (EDs) with pain were far less likely to have their pain assessed than were children with long-bone fractures (Zempsky et al., 2011).
“In general, moreover, a number of studies have shown that physicians tend to prescribe less analgesic medication for African Americans than for whites (Bernabei et al., 1998; Edwards et al., 2001; Green and Hart-Johnson, 2010). A study that used a pain management index to evaluate pain control found that blacks were less likely than whites to obtain prescriptions for adequate pain relief, based on reported pain severity and the strength of analgesics provided. Because such an index is a way to quantify a person’s response to pain medication alone, it is likely that people in this study did not receive other types of treatment for pain either.”
Source:
Institute of Medicine, “Relieving Pain in America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research” (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2011), p. 68.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13172
– See more at: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Pain#Research
This is not some kind of “tumblr is full of people whose self-perceived problems don’t exist or matter in the ‘real world’” issue (and I generally find that attitude to be bullcrap coming from more privileged people who don’t want to have to think about or provide for different people’s problems).
There are a lot of people in marginalised groups who don’t receive adequate medical care because their doctors don’t know how to deal with them (or are outright prejudiced against them – seriously, read blogs by transgender people, it would be hard to find any who haven’t had to deal with an ignorant or bigoted doctor at a time when they just needed understanding and help, and the extra stress of that didn’t do their health any good).
There’s a lot of research to be done and a lot of training and education programmes to be overhauled and brought up to date in light of what we have learned and are still learning about human physical and psychological diversity. This is a big, big job, it’s going to be hard work, and we’re never going to be able to say “that’s it, it’s complete” because human society continues to develop and change and throw up new eventualities.
But it’s the right thing to do, if we actually want everyone to have access to good, helpful medical care. If you don’t care whether people who aren’t abled, white, cisgender and/or men get that care, you should say so up front and own your lack of compassion for people different from yourself rather than dismiss their needs as insignificant.
It’s actually a thing I’ve discovered since I got RA. A lot of the doctors I’ve seen don’t actually seem to want to help me. I’ve experienced this with more than one doctor. The other thing is a number of the specialists I’ve seen, people who are supposed to focus entirely on Rheumatology, haven’t been keeping up to date with the research on it. Their knowledge is about as up to date as it was when they went to medical school.
There are a few good Doctors, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are too many who don’t give enough of a shit.
Labyrinth 