Effective Communication in HealthCare: Impact of Gender Difference - Essay Sample

Introduction

Effective communication is a very vital tool in any setup where there is a collection of people gathered together with a specific focus. HealthCare is just one of the first example of areas where communication is mandatory at any point of the day, between the physicians and the patients. Many patients have ended up losing lives just because of poor handling by the attending physicians. Gender difference is an example of significant factors that determine the effectiveness of communication ability in healthcare.

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Typically, there are ordinarily specific kinds of illnesses, like heart-related diseases, cancer, or blood pressure, which requires special attention and keen checkup by the physicians. This is because, in the occurrence of any other external effect, their body functioning might be altered, triggering their diseases beyond their manageable level. Eventually, they may end up losing their lives. Sometimes, it is the doctor or rather the physician who may choose to give better or inferior kind of healthcare to a given group of either male or female patients, while at times, it may be the patient who is for one reason or another, prefers being attended to by a given type of gender (Sandhu, et al., 2009, pp. 348-355)

In either case, the protruding point of concern is that these choices of who is to do or attend to who, first influences the effectiveness of communication ability and interactions between the two parties in a hospital and thus end up either improving or depriving the quality of services rendered to patients. The very first effect that poor communication results to is stress. Research done before by various medical professionals has identified that stress is one of the fatal causes of premature deaths people, especially those who are suffering from a given range of diseases that eventually lower their immune system.

Bremner (2001), suggests that stress has the potential to cause hippocampal damages. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), also indicate that stress can progressively develop in a level that it causes hippocampal atrophy, and possibly some severe memory deficits on the patients.

Common effects of stress. Indeed, stress symptoms can affect your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior. Stress that's left unchecked can contribute to many health problems, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. (Mertes et al., 1993, pp. 15-19).

Aims and Objectives

With the growing concern of the need for better communication abilities in a health setup, it is so essential to perform the research. The significance of doing this research was to establish how the effect of gender differences impacted patients or physicians. It was also meant to take side after conducting a research analysis clearly, and determine how the issue of gender difference influence the recovery process and death rates in hospitals, and finally, highlight at the end of the research the possible mitigation techniques to help in counteracting the effects created by the challenge.

Research Questions (RQs)

• To effectively achieve the aim of the research, several RQs which were to help in guiding the whole process of the study were highlighted.
• What are the causes of gender differences in hospitals?
• How did the incidence of gender biasness influence the general activities of healthcare, in terms of efficiency and quality?
• Highlight one mitigation techniques that may be used to prevent the possible occurrence of gender favoritism in healthcare to ensure all the activities run as expected equally.

Research Methods

Sampling

Sampling was done for 509 individual patients who were adults, into the university medical care center. The patients were assigned to family practices and internal medicine assessment plans, after which a keen evaluation was done to them for one year, giving them care for that time interval. (Bertakis, 2009, pp. 356-360).

Results

After the successful sampling research was done on the 509 patients, it was noted that female and male doctors varied significantly in their behavioral forms of practice. The feminine doctors were found to provide more preventive measures and other types of psychological counseling. Male doctors, on the other hand. Took much of their time engaging in the technical activities that involved patients (Bertakis, 2009, pp. 356-360).

These activities include; taking of the medical history for patients, and supervising the physical examination of instead care for the patients. Also, female doctors were found to be so frequent in attending to the patients, while the male was more in the office; thus, one on one communication with the patients was a rare case. Most importantly, despite the female doctors attending to the patients, they were found to be so afraid in addressing technical issues like drug abuse, and this generally influenced the whole interaction of physician-patient relationship (Bertakis, 2009, pp. 356-360).

Questionnaire

Using self-administered questionnaire data collection technique, Riyadh military hospital in Saudi Arabia researched between April 2009 and May 2010 on the adult patient of the Saudi, who are attending the medical care clinics (Al-Khashan, 2012, pp. 172). The research ministered in line with the demography, history, and needs of health education.

Results

The data collected indicated that, for about 1300 forms that were distributed, about 977 people completed the questionnaires. This can be approximated to about 75.2%. Among the individuals who responded on the issue of health education, the numbers for both genders was quite impressing though, most women agreed with the point at a percentage of 77.9. (Al-Khashan, 2012, pp. 172). Significantly more men than women were for the option of being pharmacists and health educators, whereas women engaged personally in the practices with the patients and thus considered attending to nurses the primary role in a healthcare (Al-Khashan, 2012, pp. 172). The ideological differences in women and men in the sample survey were significant as it helped in noting the common gender differences in hospitals and how they affected the choices of service delivery with the doctors in the Medicare. In general, the quality of health services was significantly reduced due to gender differences.

Literature Review

How Gender Difference Influences Patient-Doctor Relations

The gender of the patients has a significant impact on the patient-doctor interaction. The gender of the patient is highly influential when considering the satisfaction of the patients as well as their ability to recall and comply with medical information and health outcomes. The gender of the patient is likely to influence their interpersonal rapport, communication informativeness, as well as relationship building with the physician (Hall et al., 1994).

In terms of communication informativeness, female patients are more likely to receive more information understandably as compared to male patients. This behavior is due to the tendency of females to question their health status as compared to male patients. Additionally, the technical explanations provided to the female patients are often delivered in a simplified language due to their tendency to ask more questions after the reports provided by the doctor. Also, female patients have a higher chance of receiving real talk as well as increased attempts to include them in discussions as compared to male patients (Hall et al., 1994).

In regards to interpersonal relationships, female patients are more likely to receive positive "tension release" expressions from physicians as compared to male patients. For instance, the physician may use laughter as a form of tension release with a female patient. This character is due to the high chance that a female patient is more likely to express tension and ask for help than male patients (Stewart, 1983). Doctors are also more likely to ask female patients their feelings or opinions as compared to male patients. This is because male patients tend to be more assertive in presenting their suggestions as well as views as compared to female patients. Male patients also tend to be more negative when giving their disagreements as compared to female patients.

Female patients have more positive experiences with their doctors as compared to male patients. This positive relationship between the female patient and their doctor is attributed to higher information giving from both the patient and the physician as well as greater use of empathy towards the female patients as compared to male patients (Hall et al., 1993). Furthermore, doctors are less likely to leave the room (interrupt the visit) when with female patients as compared to the male patients as the female patients were both agreeing and disagreeing more than the male patients (Meeuwesen et al., 1991).

Conclusion

In conclusion, despite gender differences, both patients and physicians experience bias and stereotypical prejudice, which may affect their communication during their interactions. It is, therefore, a requirement by the medical world organizations and various related departments to enforce laws that creates fairness to fill all the gaps in the medical centers which have been indeed identified in this particular research (Gureje et al., 1998, pp. 147-151).

References

Bremner, J. D., (2001). Hypotheses and controversies related to effects of stress on the hippocampus: An argument for stress-induced damage to the hippocampus in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Hippocampus, 11(2), 75-81.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hipo.1023

Mertes, H., Sawada, S. G., Ryan, T., Segar, D. S., Kovacs, R., Foltz, J., & Feigenbaum, H. (1993). Symptoms, adverse effects, and complications associated with dobutamine stress echocardiography. Experience in 1118 patients. Circulation, 88(1), 15-19.

Sandhu, H., Adams, A., Singleton, L., Clark-Carter, D., & Kidd, J. (2009). The impact of gender dyads on doctor-patient communication: a systematic review. Patient education and counseling, 76(3), 348-355.

Bertakis, K. D., (2009). The influence of gender on the doctor-patient interaction. Patient education and counseling, 76(3), 356-360. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738399109003243

Al-Khashan, H. I., Almulla, N. A., Galil, S. A., Rabbulnabi, A. A., & Mishriky, A. M. (2012). Gender differences in health education needs and preferences of Saudis attending Riyadh Military Hospital in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Journal of family & community medicine, 19(3), 172.

Hall, J. A., Epstein, A. M., DeCiantis, M. L., & McNeil, B. J. (1993). Physicians' liking for their patients: More evidence for the role of effect in medical care. Health Psychology, 12(2), 140-146. doi:10.1037//0278-6133.12.2.140

Hall, J. A., Irish, J. T., Roter, D. L., Ehrlich, C. M., & Miller, L. H. (1994). Satisfaction, Gender, and Communication in Medical Visits. Medical Care, 32(12), 1216-1231. doi:10.1097/00005650-199412000-00005

Meeuwesen, L., Schaap, C., & Van der Staak, C. (1991). Linguistic analysis of doctor-patient communication. Social Science & Medicine, 32(10), 1143-1150. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(91)90091-p

Stewart, M. (1983). Patient Characteristics which are related to the Doctor-Patient Interaction. Family Practice, 1(1), 30-36. doi:10.1093/fampra/1.1.30

Gureje, O., Von Korff, M., Simon, G. E., & Gater, R. (1998). Persistent pain and well-being: a World Health Organization study in primary care. Jama, 280(2), 147-151.