Title: Patient Care: A Gender Perspective
A man-centered world recently discovered that women are different from men and therefore created a new sub-topic of medicine:
- Gender medicine: a task for the third millennium. ... Gender-specific medicine is the study of how diseases differ between men and women in terms of prevention, clinical signs, therapeutic approach, prognosis, psychological and social impact. It is a neglected dimension of medicine. ( Gender medicine: a task for the third millennium. - NCBI)
Patients (usually males) were classified with numberless epidemiological/statistical approaches and classified on the basis of a single parameter/symptom or a cluster of them.
Each part of the body belong to different clusters or classification and can be shared by different branches of medicine. the same leg can belong to a diabetologist, vascular surgeon, orthopedic, general practitioner, internal medicine, dermatologist..... 14 Billion legs (estimate 2019)
Now the same approach will be duplicated on the female world. The era of Big Data is here: 2 * Big Data.
We just doubled the number but the approach to Patient Care didn't change.
Standard Perspective (Men Pespective)
The standard approach to Patient Care is a bureaucratic one, aimed to supply the same treatment to an apparently homogeneous group.
To attain this goal everything has to be clearly defined:
- symptoms, clusters of symptoms/diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Gilbert's syndrome....)
- drugs according to their effects on symptoms (in most cases via different and often unknown mechanism)
- role of the physician and their coworkers, hierarchy in the health care system and responsibility of the operators
- definition of the correct procedures according to diagnosis (Guide Lines).
In this context, any operator can be replaced by a new one, educated to behave exactly like the previous one.
The Health System (HS) has a hierarchical structure identical to those of the Army or of the Ministerial Offices.
Aim of these large structures is to have a result that involves large populations.
If the HS introduces a new therapy that improves the health of 80% of a patient group this is a positive result and nobody cares about the remaining 20%.
If I win a war but 20% of the soldiers die, I am a winner or a loser?
We have to deal with populations, we need statistics.
Statistics describe populations, but when I have to treat a single patient often statistics can be misleading.
Every healthcare practitioner is responsible for a small part of your body and has full insurance to cover her/his mistakes in their limited activity, obviously following the Guide Lines.
This is the man approach to caring of the patient, doesn't matter the sex of the operator
What Can Quantum Computing Do To Healthcare? 31 October 2019
Gender Perspective
The woman's approach to caring is different. For centuries women cared their children and everybody has only one mother. Children usually got personalized care. And they didn't realize that. It was just right.
Now we talk about personalized medicine: a mother-like caring or a heap of ununderstandable data?
Should we ask patients what they would prefer?
How a mother-like caring (a Gender Perspective) can be implemented in the real world?
The Gender Perspective is the real neglected dimension of medicine
GP proposal
Afford/ don't afford
Figura
A Metabolic Signature of Mitochondrial Dysfunction Revealed through a Monogenic Form of Leigh Syndrome, 2015
Self-consciousness
- Standard perspective: Statistics --> Rules --> Prescriptions (Orders by Authority)
- Gender Perspective: Metabolic profiling (genetic and environmental) --> Education --> Self- consciousness --> Participation
Basic behaviour
Glucose/O2
Day/Night
