UK: Daily Mail: Half of women fear the NHS treats their health as a 'second-class issue'

Half of women fear the NHS treats their health as a 'second-class issue', damning poll reveals

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13959565/amp/half-women-nhs-health-second-class-poll.html

Archive link to avoid giving the Mail clicks https://archive.ph/IBv32

"A third of women said they experience pain that affects their everyday lives, yet four in ten (42 per cent) said the NHS did not provide adequate pain management."

Shocked but not surprised. Actually, I am surprised the figures not higher.

How do we change attitudes?

 

Yes

but it’s also about the power others realise they’ve been given to make people second third and for us fourth class on the ‘whose needs vs wants come above the other scale’ they realise they’ve been handed

and that human nature can’t seem to resist the chance to put the foot on the neck when the opportunity has been lined up as if humanity and survival is a zero sun game

 

And yet psychology tells us that we are social creatures and altruism arose because we were concerned with the good of the tribe.

I am amazed how often the default setting is disbelief, especially when so many times this has been proved to be both wrong and harmful

 

Did they ask any men what they thought? If not the results just show the NHS is broken surely.

 

My emphasis...

In many cases pain relief is not provided at all. The idea that women exaggerate and lie every time they see a doctor seems to be buried deep into the psyche of many doctors I've met. A doctor I met in my teens (but I'm not sure which one) appears to have recorded that I'm a drug-seeker or some other insulting conclusion on my medical records. That conclusion seems to be the first thing a doctor sees on my medical records ever since, whether in the days of paper, or now, on computer. If I mentioned pain I would be scowled at and the whole tone of the appointment would change and the appointment is hurriedly finished. In my more whimsical moments, I have imagined that my medical records have a score kept - appointments when I mentioned pain and those when I didn't with the words at the top of the page saying "Do not trust this woman".

 

Thas was my conclusion, and felt it was rather wandering into the pope being catholic and bears using woods levels of reporting.

Of more relevance is; why is the NHS (and DWP) default setting to automatically disbelieve those trying to use their services in the first instance and how do we change that?

 

You remove the financial incentive on individuals to cut corners. GPs get paid to disbelieve people have any serious disease, including cancer. Obstetricians get paid to be in their private rooms and assume NHS mums will be fine.

 

That would help but the biases may remain, such as differences in the response to men's and women's pain, and to white women's and black women's pain.

 

I think Invisible Women goes a long way to explaining it. Everything is default male. If you don’t fit the default, you’re an exception. Systems are built on this, for years it was accepted. It’s just like the myth that having a coil doesn’t hurt and doesn’t require pain relief or any sort of recovery. You get told off for screaming and crying and “upsetting the other patients” no bother that it wasn’t an appropriate treatment for me, I wasn’t prepared, it wasn’t done in line with manufacturers guidance etc etc. but that doesn’t really matter, it’s just a coil. Women have them all the time. See also babies, periods, pain, mental health issues, I could go on.

 

I would like to have some evidence for this. When I had the worst pain known to man - renal colic, said to be worse than childbirth, a nurse thought I was a silly wimp when I pointed out that the entonox machine she had offered me was actually turned off. She insisted it was fine despite nothing coming out of it.

Men aren't supposed to be bothered by pain at all. I am pretty sure they get even less sympathy than women if they are.

 

Doesn't "men-flu" exist in the UK?
Canadian research some years ago; Women got tranquillizers, men got painkillers for the same kind of pain.

 

We don’t get sympathy we get called hysterical and referred to counselling (if we’re lucky) usually just get laughed at or told to lose weight or the classic “have a baby”

 

or my personal favourite; Would you like something for your anxiety (I have medically induced ptsd after almost dying 3 times)

 

In the UK 'Man-flu' is a term of derision to indicate that men always moan more when they are ill and should be told to grow up.

 

We don't even get that amount of interest. We just get eyes going upwards and out the door.

At least you get some faux sympathy. We just get disdain when we ask for a prostate test (when a week later the biopsy shows Gleason stage 4+3 invasive disease).

 

Ok men definitely have it worse

 

The question remains; how do we change the system so that disbelief isn't the default response to anyone ?

 

More training on empathy. Knowing all about medical facts isn't enough to become a good doctor.
Not only training for students, but for all docs.

And prejudice in all forms should be looked at too. (Reddit communications between docs can be painful to watch)