Sex and gender differences in primary care help-seeking for common somatic symptoms: a longitudinal study 2023 Ballering, Rosmalen et al

Why are these people so unembarrassed about doing exercises set to caution undergraduates about using terminology without considering whether they understand it, and actually publishing them?

Perhaps it's just that I haven't been to university and assume the standards are higher than they really are, so it reads like somebody trying to get employment as a surgeon chucking their instruments in the staffroom dishwasher.
 
A few years ago I had a copious GI bleed. It went on for several years. Initially I was worried that I might have cancer. But due to the total incompetence and disbelief I met with I thought I might bleed to death or die of heart failure before diagnosis because the bleeding was getting worse and worse. It took three hospitals three and a half years to find the source of that bleed (a 4cm polyp with very fragile blood vessels). There was no urgency from anyone. I bought my GP records after that and discovered that a doctor at the first hospital I had been seen by had minimised what I said to "Patient has bleeding piles".
That's a really good point. If women are more likely to have their reports of symptoms minimised, disregarded and straight out ignored than men are (and I think we can be pretty sure that is true), it logically means that more contact with the medical system will be required to get to a diagnosis. Of course, that also means that women will be more likely to be labelled as high users of the medical system, and probably as overly emotional as they get increasingly worried and fed-up.

If there are instances of women as a group having more contact with the medical system than men, it should raise the question 'are there problems in providing efficient effective care to this group?'.
 
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