For 18 years, my mom was at every doctor's appointment with me. Healthcare seemed really simple with a guardian who acted as my advocate.
Unfortunately, I have painfully clear memories of doctor visits over the last decade since where:
❌symptoms and discomfort were repeatedly dismissed and the conversation pivoted to weight loss.
❌a chronic issue was dismissed by multiple physicians because I was "too young"; it took 5 years for a doctor to ignore my age and just prescribe me the necessary medication.
❌I overheard nurses refer to me (a patient!!) as "headache" after the university health center sent me to the ER for a migraine that lasted 7+ days. They giggled thinking I was still asleep. I was scared and alone.
➡️Women and people of color are more likely to experience medical gaslighting.
➡️Women and people of color are under-researched when it comes to understanding their signs, symptoms, and onset of diseases and other conditions.
Making the career move into healthcare has been rewarding because, among other things, I feel like I can be a part of righting the wrongs that were done to me and so many others. (I'll save historical wrongs for another day...)
This is a helpful article if you struggle(d) with getting your medical professionals to hear you.
'Medical gaslighting' is a term that has surfaced often in the last 2-3 years. It refers to medical professionals dismissing or downplaying a patient's physical symptoms or attributes them to something else.
Medical gaslighting is more likely to happen to women and people of color.
📢"Don’t let a doctor brush off concerns and make you feel like a hypochondriac, says Malone-King. Most important, 'don’t take no for an answer' she says. 'I kept forcing doctors to listen to me that what I was going through and experiencing was valid. I eventually found a doctor who didn’t rush me as a patient but listened to me and understood what I was going through.'"
At Visana, our healthcare providers embrace #shareddecisionmaking for each and every one of our patients, meaning they provide patients with trustworthy and complete information to be an active part of their healthcare plan.
![“How I Got My Doctor to Hear Me”]()
“How I Got My Doctor to Hear Me”
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Passionate about accelerating the re-engineering and digital transformation of U.S and Global healthcare to achieve the Quintuple Aim - Health Equity, Outcomes and the Economy
1dMichael Koriwchak, MD, Excellent distallation of the root causes of the dysfunction in out healthcare system how we have lost our way over the last 125 years with a risk-event, episodic based model that does little or nothing to address advanced primary care and chronic disease mangement that DPC is designed to address. Everyone that is mad about the status quo needs to view your video, especially this election year to raise public sentiment for reform. Love to get your thoughts about one of my partners that is automating the complex clinical and financial workflow - integrating the phone system with the EHR - to enable providers to get paid for all of the non-face time spent managing high-risk patient, not feasible with spreadsheets and manual methods.