User:Jnk03/Gender bias in medical diagnosis

Pain bias
In recent decades, the disparity between female pain treatment and male pain treatment has been receiving more attention. Chronic pain is more prevalent in women than in men, and women report more severe, frequent, and prolonged cases of pain; however, they are less likely to receive adequate health treatment. Studies show that physicians often perceive women's complaints as emotional responses rather than physiological pain. Women are less likely to be prescribed painkillers after surgeries, according to several studies conducted in the 1980's. For example, after undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery, women received more sedatives rather than pain treatment. Studies from the 2000's showed that physicians dismissed women's pain as inexplicable because they refused to believe the complaints; some physicians even blamed the female patients for their pain.

Western cultural recognition of pain bias
As the issue of pain bias becomes more popular, media coverage of the topic has also increased. In 2014, the National Pain Report conducted an online national survey of almost 2,600 women with a variety of chronic pain conditions. 65% felt that their pain was being given inadequate attention because of they were female, and 91% believed that the health-care system discriminated against women. Nearly half of the women were told that their pain was psychological, and 75% were told they must learn to deal with the pain. In 2015, The Atlantic published an article about a woman's experience with acute abdominal pain. She had to wait almost two hours at the emergency room before receiving treatment, but she endured the pain longer than necessary due to a misdiagnosis. In the United States, women wait an average of 65 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain, while men only wait 49 minutes. A 2019 article published by The Washington Post references a 2008 study that supports the statements made in 2015 The Atlantic article.