by Mike Walker

Created on: March 06, 2009

We would all like to think that when we present ourselves at the doctor's office for a check-up, or certainly due to illness, that our doctor will take his or her time to thoughtfully address our condition with care, concern, and the best practice of medicine possible. Doctors, too, wish to provide this level of service and most do, but often physicians are rushed through exams due to large patient loads. In an emergency department setting, this situation can be even worse. Is it possible that doctors misdiagnose or jump to conclusions about patient's conditions based on stereotypes?

Sadly, it is very possible, but something that most physicians truly try to avoid. Over the past two decades, most professional organizations have encouraged broader diversity training in colleges of medicine and younger physicians are more likely to espouse a wider understanding of different cultures and lifestyles. Still, for some physicians a gay man complaining of chronic flu-like symptoms may suggest HIV infection while a young African-American woman with pain near the liver may suggest drug or alcohol abuse. We can reduce our urge to jump to stereotypes, but all of us may at some latent level still have some; the real task at hand in medical practice is not only to treat each patient with an open mind but to order whatever clinical tests and diagnostic markers that are indicated and needed to provide a science-based picture over the patient. In example, an HIV ELISA test might be indicated for a person complaining of chronic flu-like symptoms regardless of his sexual orientation. The physician must examine the clinical presentation of symptoms, not whatever social stereotypes the patient may in an obtuse manner bring to mind. Allopathic care is based on a concept-indicator model where diseases should be investigated due to symptoms and clinical findings while empathy on the part of any doctor can only better chances at effective patient communication.

The benefit of understanding that certain ethnic and sociocultural factors do influence disease-states is useful to doctors. Travel to Africa, in example, could cause malaria or other tropical diseases in a patient so a person who comes from a central African nation and presents symptoms in line with such diseases should be investigated for these. Doctors deal with increasingly sophisticated and broad populations of patients and their awareness of a diversity of diseases must be keen, but never clouded by stereotypes.

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