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So the way I see it, there's one of two (mostly useless) ways to eliminate gender bias. The first is bias training, to get people to recognize and react to their implicit biases. You see one patient that is rude, non-compliant, etc, and you implicitly assume that patients that have the same features will act the same, and you act accordingly. This is usually within the context of racial bias ("the black patient isn't compliant, so all black patients must also not be compliant and thus I'll not give them the best care"). Not-so-fun-fact: most people hate going to these sort of training workshops (me included), and so I don't think these are very effective. The second is having more women in healthcare. With cultural/racial/ethnic bias, we have seen a decrease in that bias when physicians of that culture/ethnicity are involved in that patient's care. Problem is, I don't believe this has worked all that well when applied to gender bias. You may argue that women are severely under-represented in areas of healthcare (surgery for example), and we should strive for there to be more female surgeons. However, look at obstetrics/gynecology in the US. We have a predominantly female workforce, and there's still bias against women during/after pregnancy. Look at how many patients presenting with symptoms of pre-eclampsia (leading to a potentially fatal condition HELLP) are missed or disregarded. What about the rates of pulmonary embolism after overlooked deep vein thrombosis symptoms post-childbirth? The healthcare industry has in recent times made it hard to spend the time or resources needed to really "care" for a patient. Doctors have to keep their visits short to maintain their volume (and job), nurse shortages are prevalent, and everyone is overworked. I don't know if or when we're going to end up solving this problem, but maybe starting an honest conversation with colleagues will help. Edit: changed some words for clarity. |