Gender and Ethnicity in Medicine

The United States is a nation of immigrants; they have virtually every culture of the world within its borders. Due to this reason, there must be a certain level of cultural competency within its people. A comparison and contrast will be made to compare the Hispanic cultural views on medical care to the American cultural views toward medical care. I chose to explore Hispanic culture because of my background but most importantly due to its richness of unique characteristics. I will provide an overview on how heredity, culture, and environment can influence behavior in the medical office. Furthermore, I will express my opinion about why a medical assistant,

Cultural diversity in the health care setting is increasing each year. Knowing how to care for patients of different religious and spiritual faiths is essential to providing high-quality, patient-centered care. The author of this paper will research three lesser-known religions; Taoism, Sikhism and Shamanism. Through this paper, she will provide a brief background on each of the three religions and present information regarding spiritual perspectives on healing, critical components of healing and health care considerations associated with each religion.

Not only are women deliberately kept out of joining medical schools and medical practices in general, their bodies are also not typically studied in medical science and research, because instead, male bodies are more often used. This makes the male body seem dominantly normative and generalizes an idea that women’s bodies must be similar to men’s, and dangerously disregards women’s particular differences. This causes medical professionals to make decisions based on this research that may not be particularly appropriate for women, such as the fact that aspirin reduces the rate of heart attacks for men but not for women, much to many doctors’ surprise. Gender stereotypes also exist within the medical field that may prevent women from receiving the care and attention they need, as many doctors often assume women are emotional, and thus, exaggerating their symptoms, versus men who are believed to be more rational. This also affects the amount of care they receive, which sometimes is too much or too little because some procedures like cesarean sections and hysterectomies are performed too often when other options would be just as adequate, but unfortunately, women’s reproductive systems are more emphasized than other just as important aspects of their health. In other instances, they do not receive as much diagnosis or are not taken as seriously as men are, by their doctors. According to our earlier readings, men are more often to interrupt women, so men physicians can often

Although most American citizens today associate racial and ethnic disparities in public health care quality with socioeconomic status, a majority of studies performed conclude that these discrepancies are still highly prevalent when the factor of one’s socioeconomic status is taken out of the equation. Health disparities for a certain minority result in a higher number of illness, injury, and even mortality for that race or ethnicity in comparison to white Americans; therefore, health care disparities can be defined as differences between groups in health coverage, specifically focusing on both the quality and access to care. The Office of Management and Budget has created two ethnic categories for all American citizens to fit into, being either

Gender also determines how the individuals treatment is seen and how their illness is advanced, this means that most of the time men’s treatment is more intense because they leave the issue to progress compared to women. Another thing is that women tend to live longer than men and this is proven by statistical graphs, these show that women live a longer life then men.

Today, racial and ethnic disparities exist in the public healthcare system in the United States. It is strongly supported by data that depicts members of the minority groups receive disproportionately from different health issues such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and asthma, among other conditions. The main contributors to the racial and ethnic disparities in the public healthcare are the social determinants of the health external to the healthcare delivery system. In addition, social and economic status also affect people’s vulnerability to the disease and their accessibility to public health services. The article provides historical analysis that shows a deteriorating status in the

On November 11th, 2004, NitroMed, a Massachusetts based pharmaceutical company published a study on the effects of a new drug called BiDil in treating heart failure among African Americans in the New England Journal of Medicine (Taylor 2049). Since announcing the study, NitroMed’s research has sparked controversy surrounding the ethical implications and scientific evidence of race-based medicine. This study marks a breakthrough in race-based drug treatments as the first pharmaceutical ever researched, endorsed and targeted for a

Although the term cardiovascular disease refers to a disorder of the cardiovascular system, it is usually associated with atherosclerosis, also known as arterial disease. It is considered the leading cause of deaths in the world, taking 17.1 million lives a year. There are only a few factors that are non-modifiable, these being the persons age, gender, family history and their race and ethnicity. Although there are non-modifiable risk factors, there are multiple multiple risk factors that are modifiable that anyone can use to prevent getting any type of cardiovascular disease. These people just need to have the motivation to be able to change themselves and their lifestyles in order to better

Heart disease, also known cardiovascular disease, is an illness like none other; it takes an unfortunate toll on the body and causes many malfunctions. People who deal with this disorder suffer from problems such as heart attacks, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and more. Although heart disease is a major concern for many people, it is not as prevalent for those in certain parts of the world. This paper compares the rates of heart disease in the United States versus those in Japan. After studying this disease and how it affects people around the world, it is clear that Americans have much higher rates of heart disease than the Japanese, mainly because of risk factors, like poor diets and lack of exercise. By studying the history of heart disease in both countries, the implications of the disorder, and different populations impacted, it is clear that heart disease is a major epidemic around the world. The evidence that reports the differences of heart disease rates between America and Japan is astounding.

Anne Fadiman wrote this book to document the conflict between cultural barriers and how they affect medical issues. In this book, Lia Lee is a Hmong child was has epilepsy and battles cultural medical differences. The main struggle in this story is the conflict between the doctors and parents because they cannot seem to get on the same page. While writing the book, Fadiman stated that there was a “clash of cultures”. (Fadiman, preface) Meaning, there are two different sides to the story and the problem has not be solved.

Cultural diversity in the medical field is, at times, greatly hindered because of religious beliefs, language barriers, and the hierarchies of diverse cultures and these have the propensity to affect the continuity of care for the patients. “Every person has different aspects that constitute their identities, according to how they see themselves….This means that seeing an individual in terms of

Mortality rates: In gender men generally die earlier than women because of many aspects of their life, for instance in general women tend to take care of them self more physically. A lot of women go on diets and a lot of exercise DVDs and detunes are mainly aimed at women. Women in general do try to eat healthy and go on diets whereas men usually aren't very aware of their diet and don’t have much intention on improving it. Women also tend to go to the doctors and seek medical advice more often and have their illnesses diagnosed and treated more often than men. Because women' generally take more care of themselves and do more to keep themselves healthy.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the most common cause of mortality worldwide, especially in developed countries. But they are also largely preventable, and many studies have tried to clarify the related risk factors, and what could be done to avoid them.

Women presently face multiple challenges in the healthcare system. Things such as research androcentrism, medicalization, and gender stereotyping are all things women must overcome in today’s society. Research androcentrism or male centeredness in the field of health care is used to describe how men are used as a baseline for medical research and standards of care (Shaw & Lee 368). By using only men, generally white men, as a baseline for research, the effects of drugs and procedures are not adequately studied; a lack of research on other groups of people, specifically women, can prove to be dangerous because certain drugs may affect women differently than men. Another challenge pertaining to research androcentrism is the fact that women are not always included in clinical trials (Shaw & Lee 368). Until recently, the biological differences

A statistic from World Health Organization indicates that 60% of deaths are caused by chronic diseases. This is related to the increase of affluence and sedentary lifestyle. If we continue living this lifestyle, it will be easier for us to get the diseases. In this fast pace lifestyle, we are always on the go. We usually choose to eat food without thinking much about the food content but just thinking about filling our stomach. Apart from food consumption factor, family history and polluted surroundings are also the major causes of the chronic diseases. However, there are some key chronic disease prevention steps we can take such as we should practice a healthy lifestyle, perform regular health check and reduce the risk factor from chronic