…and betrayed Hypocrat sermen?…
Si ça serait le cas, il n’y aurait pas beaucoup de médecins qui auraient soigné des antivax atteints de la COVID…
Doctors, like everyone else, have all kinds of biases, whether they explicitly tell you or even recognize it in themselves (implicit bias). It's already known that patients with obesity experience discrimination and that a significant percentage of health professionals. Doctors have been shown to take women's pain less seriously than men's and to spend less time listening to women describe their symptoms than they do with men. It's even worse for black women.
Biases in healthcare link
The word “bias” refers to a negative or positive idea a person has about someone or something. A person’s bias can affect how they interact with people of certain groups.
An implicit bias is a bias that a person is unaware of. A person who has an implicit bias may believe they treat everyone equally. However, the person’s implicit bias may cause unconscious negative associations toward certain groups of people.
The negative attitudes underlying enacted stigma can be explicit or implicit. Explicit attitudes are conscious and reflect a person's opinions or beliefs about a group. Implicit attitudes are automatic and often occur outside of awareness and in contrast to explicitly held beliefs. - from
WaPo
“What was most surprising is how clear the signals were in the data,” Markowitz said. “It really paints a picture that bias is not just a one-off phenomenon among certain physicians or individuals. Bias is systemic, subtle and consequential in medicine.”
Markowitz set off by wanting to investigate how biases could appear with some of the most vulnerable populations and aimed his focus on those who are in critical care.
“The evidence suggests bias manifests in how physicians talk about their patients,” he said. “And it's probably not too far of a leap to also suggest it might affect their care as well.”
Doctors' Unconscious Bias Affects Quality Of Health Care Services, Research Shows from npr
There is a growing body of evidence that physicians and other healthcare professionals hold strong negative opinions about people with obesity.
Personally, I have disclosed a few times with both good and bad outcomes. The very first year I started doing sex work I was hospitalized. I disclosed to the emergency doctor (young male) who didn't react and just continued as if it make no difference but he most likely noted in in my file and after a few days, when I was discharged, another Dr, a middle aged woman, brought it up and for some reason started asking me all kinds of irrelevant (to me) questions that were so loaded with judgement and stereotypes.
I was really shocked (my health issue was unrelated to sex work or drugs) but I later concluded she had decided that my abcess was caused by injecting drugs (?) instead of an ingrown hair? Because, of course prostitution = heroine user?? I'm only guessing because she did not say anything to me about why she asked if I used drugs by injection and she thought it was urgent to test me for hiv even after I told her I'd been tested very recently.. It was so inappropriate and ignorant.
I never disclosed again until a few months ago. Mixed reactions. Nurse was amazing, doctor was the absolute worst experience I've ever had, I did not get proper treatment. When I told the nurse at the clinic what had happened, she was really angry about how the doctor had acted with me and flat out told me I didn't receive proper care. So no, doctors aren't superhuman. Some are judgemental pricks, and many may not realize it but implicit bias impacts how patients are treated and the level of care they receive. It's been studied, it's well known. My claims aren't only based on my personal experience.
Why would I disclose to my own family doctor and take the risk? You can't walk back from that one. Once it's out, it's out. Does it make it right? No, of course not. It's a real shame but it is the way it is.
Now that our electronic files are accessed by any health professional, I've had 2 specialists (issues completely unrelated to sex work) comment on how many/often sti screening results were in my file. One was outright rude and clearly judgemental while the other seemed puzzled and commented/asked if they were testing me this much because I had multiple partners (?) to which I obviously didn't answer, and she moved on and without showing any change in her attitude. And those are doctors just thinking I'm a slut, not even that I'm a sex worker.
Sex workers who have disclosed their occupation to health providers have frequently encountered discrimination expressed in a range of ways, including having insensitive and abusive language used toward them, being treated disrespectfully or humiliated in public health care spaces, experiencing physical marginalization within the health care setting, denial of care, and breaches of confidentiality.
Disclosure of sex work to health care providers sometimes results in a lower quality of care. Studies show that health care providers express ambivalence about treating sex workers but do so reluctantly because of their professional ethical obligation to provide nonjudgmental services. Other health care providers outrightly deny care after learning about a patient’s involvement in sex work... study
Sex workers across many geopolitical contexts whose occupation is known often recount inappropriate care from health care providers, including through disrespectful and abusive language, public humiliation, physical separation from other patients, inferior service, inflated charges for private health care services, outright denial of care, and blame when reporting sexual assault. It is within these types of potentially stigmatizing health care settings where only about 10% of the participants in Canada and the UK—both countries with public health care systems—had disclosed their involvement in sex work to health professionals. study
fyi The government's centralized electronic medical file database to which any health professionals, pharmacists etc you see has access to - is set up with (your) consent as the default position. Meaning, no one ever asked us for our consent to keep all of this personal medical information stored, they automatically determined we were consenting.
You can request to withdraw consent if you do not think your endocrinologist needs to know how often you get tested and what the results are because the default is that they have have access to all this information, if they consult your medical profile. I don't believe my family doctor does but I'm not sure. So if that's something you're worried about your family doctor coming across, I'd recommend either withdrawing consent or getting tested anonymously. Just fyi
Note: You can register and have access to some of that information (including who has looked at your file), by registering for access to your
Health booklet (through cliqsecur)
So sorry, this was another long one!!!
decriminalizesex.work
