Soundings: Stereotypical?

As medical students, we come into contact with an enormous assortment of patients who vary in every respect—for example, age, size, colour, intellect, and personality. People we may never come into contact with in our personal lives present to health services every day expecting unbiased and unprejudiced treatment.

How do we deal with such diversity? We have to adjust our clinical interaction between patients—people are different. But do we approach patients according to our own social standards and stereotypical constraints? Putting a label on someone before getting to the root of the clinical problem is all too easy.

Imagine the scene. A young man comes to the emergency department on a Friday night, comatosed and smelling of booze. We instantly label him as a lad who has had a few too many out on the town, but for all we know something utterly random could have happened—he could have just been hit by a somersaulting kangaroo.

Part of the problem lies in medical education; we are taught to recognise classic symptoms and presentations of disease. If someone falls outside of the conventional criteria, we often do not know what to do with them. As undergraduates, we all recognise classic textbook questions based on cases—for example, the businessman returning from Bangkok with a questionable sexually transmitted infection or a shipyard worker with asbestos lung disease. Contrary to belief, most of these classic scenarios are simply not true and certainly more complex than suggested.

Social stereotypes are not advisable in the medical world. People are so diverse and present with such different medical problems that stereotyping and inaccurate judgment can lead to a blinkered approach to medicine. Keeping our minds open to diversity and not categorising patients the way society dictates is important. So next time a drunk patient comes in to the emergency department on a Friday night, remember to ask about any local acrobatic wildlife—you never know what those kangaroos might have been up to.