Month: September 2019

These articles were about gender bias, racial bias and failing LGBT patients, to me these topics aren’t shocking or heard of in a medical setting. I guess if anything it amazes me that still to this day doctors or health care professionals aren’t being truly professional while treating their patients. I can’t wrap my head around how being female, a none white race or being part of the LGBT community impacts what type of care you will get. Everyone is human and we all get the same diseases and sicknesses, which means we should all be treated the same way in a medical center, but we still don’t.

We have seen throughout the semester the way doctors treat their patients. I believe around week two or three in one of our lectures Professor Sanchez talked about how the stereotypes around being a woman influenced the way her doctors treated her. This is exactly what the articles were about, a patient’s gender, race or sexual orientation impact the way their doctors will treat them. For instance, women are thought to be winy and cry about minor pain so their doctors don’t pay as much attention to what they’re feeling and just prescribe something easy even though it might not actually help with the real issue at hand. According to patients’ gender, doctors act different as well, they don’t pay as much attention to the patient or see their case as important. As the article on LGBT patients talked about, doctors aren’t doing their full medical routine as always, they don’t ask about their sex lives or treat them like other patients.

I think a very important part of stopping these biases are through education, it needs to be taught in medical school that this is in fact occurring and it shouldn’t be. If people are aware maybe they will be paying attention to their actions closer and react differently as doctors. I like that the third article said there are ways in which doctors or professionals can partake in education and training on LGBT health, this is a step in the right direction to treat all patients the same.   Also, although hard to do, as patients, if we notice anything like this happening, we need to speak up for ourselves, if doctors aren’t treating us the same, we need to speak up and maybe that will also change something.

https://www.today.com/health/gender-bias-health-care-may-be-harming-women-s-health-t133583

https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-02-11/racial-bias-in-medicine-leads-to-worse-care-for-minorities

https://psmag.com/news/american-doctors-are-failing-their-lgbt-patients

On season 7 episode 3 of Grey’s Anatomy, there is a patient that comes in with the condition HPV or “Tree Man” disease. Human papillomavirus infection, or HPV is a common sexually transmitted infection, this infection causes warts in various parts of the body. There are over 100 strains of HPV but those that get epidermodysplasia verruciformiswart have a genetic mutation that limits the immune system’s ability to handle HPV, if this happens, the virus can spread and take over creating tree-like growths.

In the beginning of the episode the patient’s wife is fighting with him to come out of the car but he refuses. The doctors and nurses come and tell her that they are parked in an area only for patients and she tells them that her husband is a patient if only he came out of the car. The doctor then asks him to come out and he says he doesn’t want to because they won’t be able to help him. He is wearing a hoodie and his face cannot be seen this whole time until the doctor asks him again to come out and he shows his face full of warts and asks her if she can actually help him out. Everyone that’s there then has a surprised face, but he comes out and then when they see his tree like hands one of the nurse’s yells surprised and disgusted. He then acts annoyed and says aren’t people nice and that’s why he stays in his house.

During the episode they don’t really explain how it comes about but they explain what happens to the body and how there is no cure, but they can treat him. Overall the way that he looks like in the show is exactly like in real life so that part is correct. Now I’m not a doctor or nurse so I can’t really say how they react when they see rare or difficult things to look at but I’d like to think they don’t make their patients feel bad. I think though the way they show how the doctor reacts versus the one working towards their residency is used to show the difference between how doctors are supposed to act and how everyone else does. Throughout the whole episode the doctors are very professional and don’t act disgusted even when operating on him. The ones working on residency though are disgusted to be working on him, they all are making faces and don’t want to be there at all. The doctor tells them they need to be used to whatever the human body throws at them if they want to be doctors, and in that moment a spider crawls out of the hand she is operating from and she gets up and freaks out until they kill it for her. I think they do this in the show to show that although the doctor isn’t disgusted about working on the patient, she is scared of more simpler things like a spider.

The way they portrayed the patient and his wife was very interesting and believable. He didn’t want to get out of his house because of this disease and hadn’t been out for four years. His wife stayed home with him as well and she is the one that pushed him to get the surgery because she said it was difficult to be with him, she wanted to go out with him and do normal stuff but they couldn’t because of his appearance. She tells him that if he doesn’t get the surgery she will leave him.

At the end of the episode they tell the wife that they’re going to have to keep operating on him and that they haven’t been able to find normal skin on him so he was going to have a lot of open wounds and that they were going to probably wait a couple months or years until he was better. She then said she didn’t know if she was going to be able to wait that long because he was never gonna look normal, as her husband stated before, he was gonna look like “Frankenstein”. I think this part has some truth in it but also might just also be to make the problems and issues the other doctor was going through throughout the show known. It of course is a difficult disease to have because of the way people see you, and I think they did a good portrayal of how people would react to it with only using people in the hospital setting.

As the Rosich and Hankin (2010) article states individual – level interventions provide support to individuals coping with stressful events. Our campus provides us with many different resources that help us physically, mentally and emotionally.

One of the resources on campus is Pioneers for H.O.P.E., they help students that are facing food insecurities, homeless and other mental hardships. They have two campus food pantries, one in Hayward campus and the other in the Concord campus, they work together with the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. They also have donation drives for students in which they give toiletries, career clothing and coats and socks. They also help students in need of emergency assistance with an emergency intervention fund and find sources of temporary housing for students in need.

http://www.csueastbay.edu/hope/

Another resource on campus are counseling services, these include, individual counseling, couples counseling, group counseling and crisis counseling. The individual counseling is a one on one meeting with a counselor who listens and talks about your concerns, challenges, and problems. They will help you by giving you a plan to address these issues and work with you and whatever you want to change. Their services are unlimited, they are open to talking about many issues such as depression, stress, family problems, self-esteem, loss, academic stress and more.

http://www.csueastbay.edu/shcs/counseling/coun.html

There are many other services available that help with health as well such as the Hayward and Concord campus medical services. Here they provide appointments and urgent care, health education, HIV testing, immunizations, massage therapy, radiology, and have a pharmacy and many more services.

http://www.csueastbay.edu/medical-services/hc-svcs.html

The Recreation and Wellness Center is an important addition to the list, this is where you can workout and feel better physically and emotionally. There are personal trainers that you can work with and different fitness programs. There is also a wellness center that  provide peer-to-peer education, outreach, and support on a variety of wellness issues.

http://www.csueastbay.edu/raw/

As presented, we can see that the CSUEB campus does a lot to help student in their well being.

Everyday we go to many different places, and we’re so used to going to certain places we don’t really pay attention or notice how accesible or lack of accessibility there might be for others.

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At the moment I work at Ross, I believe it is pretty accessible, but they could improve more. For instance, there are only two disabled parking spots, they are right in front of the door, but I think there should be more at least. From the parking lot there is a little ramp for easier access and the doors open automatically. The way some products are set, are too high up for some people to reach and they wouldn’t be accessible to everyone but there is always assistance from employees available. The biggest issue I have seen regarding accessibility are the restrooms, there are handicapped restrooms but to get inside you need to go through two doors, when I have been there if a person in a wheelchair needs to use the restroom it is almost impossible for them to get in without assistance of someone holding the doors open for them.

I live in apartments and I think the apartments aren’t super accessible, there are a lot of steps to get to the second or third floors which might be difficult for a person with any impairment, they would just be able to live on the first floor if it is available. Also, in the area to get to the pool and gym, there are three doors in total and one of them doesn’t have a ramp with would mean a person would have to go around to one of the other doors which isn’t far but still a hassle to get to. The laundry room is even worse, there are no rampa and the only way to get in would have to be going through one of the pool doors available and going across exiting and entering the laundry room. Around my house though, there are a lot of transportation availabilities, for instance there are buses at each side of the apartment building and they take you straight to the Bart station where there are other buses to go to nearby cities and the area around Concord too.

The library consists of only one floor, there are available parking spots for handicapped, as well as ramps to get into the library. The doors for the library open automatically as well. There are librarians to help in anything anyone needs right at the door. This library has technology available such as large screen monitors, large print keyboards, 3x handheld magnifiers, ZoomText, t-coil looping (assistive hearing device), and NVDA text-to-speech. They also have video magnifiers that magnify images, text and even 3-D objects up to 70 times their original size, they also have c-pen reader pens, these pens reads text aloud in English and Spanish, they can be used in library or checked out, they have rolling walkers as well available for anyone that need it.

This grocery store is right across from my house and I think it is accessible. There are a couple handicapped parking lots, and a ramp to be able to go inside and the doors open automatically as well. The isles are really wide and accessible, there are a lot of employees throughout the store if any one needs assistance with anything. There are self-scan areas as well as cashiers helping so anyone could choose one or the other.

This is the schools’ Recreation and Wellnes Center,it’s not in my town but I do go here often and thought it would be a good place to choose. think this building is designed pretty well acording to acessibility. There is a ramp at the door, and the doors open automatically. To go to the second floor there is an elevator abailable and the walking areas are really spacecious. There are also students helping in every floor making sure everyone is doing good and if anyone needs assistance. There are rooms available too for anyone that just needs to be by themselves and do their own thing if they don’t like being where there is much noise or want to do other things that are not weights.

From now on, I’ll probably notice accessibility issues everywhere I go and notice whether my town is doing good or it needs to be better yet.