I wonder just how common it is for women to have their health concerns downplayed or dismissed by a physician.
As it turns out, very. “It’s a huge issue in medicine,” says Dr Tia Powell, a bioethicist and a professor of clinical epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Health care providers may have implicit biases that affect the way women are heard, understood and treated, she said. “Medical schools and professional guidelines are addressing this problem, but there’s still much to be done.”
Dr Powell speaks from experience, “A while back, I lost 4.5 kgs over a couple months, so I went to my doctor and told him I thought it was a sign I was having a recurrence of an old illness. He gave me a few reasons he disagreed and added, “Plus you’ve been on a diet.” That struck her as odd — she had never said this, and doubted her doctor would have made the same assumption about a male patient. A set of tests with a new physician confirmed she was correct about the recurrence of a previous illness, for which she was immediately treated.
Health disparities are hardly exclusive to women. In the US, if you’re not wealthy, not white and not heterosexual, you may be receiving less than optimal health care. Research on disparities between how women and men are treated in medical settings is growing.
Research shows both doctors and nurses prescribe less pain medication to women than men after surgery, even though women report more frequent and severe pain levels. A
University of Pennsylvania study found that women waited 16 minutes longer than men to receive pain medication when they visited an emergency room. They are also more likely to be told their pain is “psychosomatic”, or influenced by emotional distress. In a survey of over 2,400 women with chronic pain, 83% said they felt they had experienced gender discrimination.
Then there are the stories that physicians themselves share. “I can’t tell you how many women I’ve seen who have seen doctors, only to be told their issues were stressrelated or in their head,” says Dr
Fiona Gupta, a neurologist at Mount Sinai in New York.
“Many of these were later diagnosed with serious neurological problems, like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s. They knew something was wrong, but had been instructed not to trust their own intuition,” she said.