Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: ER Equality Desperately Needed; Your Doctor Is Probably Judging You
If you鈥檙e in pain and have to go to the emergency room, it鈥檚 good to be a white man. A new study finds that women who go to the ER for treatment of pain are less likely to get the needed pain medication, regardless of their age or ethnicity or even the sex of the medical professional 鈥 female doctors and nurses were as unlikely to provide the relief as male ones. And nurses are less likely to record how much pain a woman is experiencing. (10/31)
If you are a doctor, the odds are that your patients think or do things you don鈥檛 agree with. Nearly聽half of Americans聽believe at least one health-related conspiracy theory,聽people routinely lie聽to their doctors about how much they drink, and聽many聽act on health information they find on social media without checking with their doctor first. In fact,聽most adults report hiding information聽from their doctors. (Samantha Kleinberg, 11/1)
It鈥檚 been 13 years since聽the term 鈥減recision medicine鈥 was coined, and its promise 鈥 the ability to treat the right patient with the right medicine in the right dose at the right time 鈥 remains as compelling as ever. But we haven鈥檛 yet fulfilled this promise. Why? (Amit Agrawal, 11/1)
Before I got diagnosed with cancer, I understood it in a couple of simplistic ways. There was a good stage of basic-bitch cancer, which is when your body grows a pebbly glob and pretty much keeps on keeping on. And there was a bad stage, which is when your body gradually stops being your body and becomes a pebbly glob factory. (Rachel Manteuffel, 10/30)