Abstract
Image being a male who has suspected breast cancer. As a male patient, if you are not in a men’s health care practice, you may be surrounded by primarily other female patients and in an environment that is very female oriented. The breast cancer literature is most likely to be tailored for the female patient. Men who have experienced a mastectomy anecdotally reported being given pink ice packs with a floral pattern on the ice pack. In addition, one male patient reported being given an ice pack after mastectomy with instructions to “insert the ice pack in a bra” to assist with maintaining the ice pack in place. Needless to say, this type of unnecessary gender stereotyping is not acceptable. The only time gender stereotyping is appropriate is for gender-specific disease such as ovarian cancer in women or testicular cancer in men, as two exemplars.
Health care providers need to exercise better judgment and practice gender equality in providing health care to all patients. Gender equality is considered to be the absence of discrimination on the basis of a patient’s physical gender in opportunities, allocation of resources or benefits, and access to health care services. Some recommendations to promote better gender equality in health care are the following:
Provide health care practitioners with continuing education on the gender-specific epidemiology of diseases and health conditions
Promote communication with each patient to ensure that the health care provider uses the appropriate pronoun, “he or she,” that the patient prefers
Ensure that the health care environment is either gender neutral or gender inclusive; a gender inclusive environment may be preferred since it does not alienate anyone and provides gender models that patients can identify with as a population member
Promote the development of health care literature that is gender inclusive for non-gender-specific diseases
Promote the ASK Model in health care practice; the ASK Model is awareness, sensitivity, and knowledge regarding gender-specific issues and populations (Lipson & Dibble, 2005)
Use gender inclusive language in written and oral health care information and instructions
Develop policies and procedures that are gender inclusive
Develop policies and procedures to manage health care providers who use inappropriate gender references
These recommendations to promote gender equality in health care are based on knowledge acquisition regarding gender issues and health care professionals’ behavior changes. In addition to ensuring gender equality for men and women, health care providers should develop similar strategies for inclusion of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community/population.