Seeing Patients

by White, Augustus A., III; Chanoff, David (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780674049055
• ISBN10: 0674049055
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

If yours"re going to have a heart attack, an organ transplant, or a joint replacement, herers"s the key to getting the very best medical care: be a white, straight, middle-class male. This book by a pioneering black surgeon takes on one of the few critically important topics that havenrs"t figured in the heated debate over health care reform-the largely hidden yet massive injustice of bias in medical treatment.Growing up in Jim Crowera Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. And while race relations have changed dramatically, old ways of thinking die hard. In Seeing Patients White draws upon his experience in startlingly different worlds to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical treatment, and to explore what it means for health care in a diverse twenty-first-century America.White and co-author David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctor-patient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment. Their book brings together insights from the worlds of social psychology, neuroscience, and clinical practice to define the issues clearly and, most importantly, to outline a concrete approach to fixing this fundamental inequity in the delivery of health care.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction: My Fellow Humans	p. 1
It Takes a Village: Memphis	p. 15
Scrub Nurse	p. 35
Becoming a Doctor: Stanford	p. 63
Becoming a Surgeon: Yale	p. 85
Combat Surgeon: Death and Our Common Humanity	p. 109
Getting toward Equal: Sweden	p. 133
A Man Ain't Nothin' but a Man	p. 153
Orthopedic Chief: Harvard	p. 177
Diagnosis and Treatment: The Subconscious at Work	p. 199
Health-Care Disparities: Race	p. 211
Health-Care Disparities: Women, Hispanics, Elderly, Gay	p. 233
Culturally Competent Care	p. 257
Epilogue	p. 281
Some Practical Suggestions for Patients and Physicians	p. 297
National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services	p. 305
Notes	p. 309
Acknowledgments	p. 321
Index	p. 325
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.