The journal I will be talking about is “Good Patients and Problem Patients: Conformity and Deviance in a General Hospital” by Judith Lorber, this journal talks about how good patients and deviant patients are treated by doctors and nurses. I found this journal very interesting because the journal talks about how deviant patients might be treated differently then “good” patients. The good patients get better treatment and dealt with better than deviant patients. One of the things I found surprising was that age and education played a factor into how the patients were treated. The patients who were younger and more educated proved to be more conforming and many of them did not show deviant behavior. The patients who came in with serious illness’s were also less deviant, since they are more dependent on the doctor or nurse to help them.

But what makes a patient deviant? Are patients who do not conform to what the doctor or nurse is telling them considered to be deviant? I do not really see that as deviant behavior, I think someone with deviant behavior would more likely be someone who does not listen to the doctor or nurse. Through reading this journal it seems to me that doctors and nurses look at patients who do not conform to be the ones who are deviant. Many people do not trust doctors when they go in to a hospital, they think that doctors tell them the wrong things or are not listening to them when they are trying to explain things. Especially after the video we watched last week for our participation assignment I can see why some people might not always want to do what a doctor is recommending them to do. Doctors having to meet a specific quota or else they would be getting fired is not about thinking about the patient. It is more about thinking about how much money they can get out of the patient and also admitting patients that might not need to be admitted.

The journal I wanted to talk a little more about is the journal titled “Social Inequalities and Exercise during Adulthood: Toward an Ecological Perspective” by Joseph G. Grzywacz and Nadine F. Marks which talks about how exercise is different in adults that come from different backgrounds. I found this journal very interesting because I never thought that someone economic standing or low social status affected their exercise levels. Exercise has always been something that is a part of my life, I have played soccer for most of my life so I am very used to being physically active. But after high school when I stopped playing soccer it became harder for me to do so, I did not have a specific place to go to do my exercise anymore. I did not want to go to a gym or anything because I thought it would get too expensive, but I ended up just using the gym at school. It is still hard for me sometimes to be motivated enough to go but I try my hardest because I know all the benefits exercise could bring into my life. This kind of relates to when the journal stated that only about 14 to 23 percent of adults participate in enough exercise to get those benefits that come from it. And that 30 percent of adults do not participate in exercise, I found that weird at first when I read it because I was thinking if you know how much exercise can improve your life why would you not want to go? But then I remembered how hard it is for me at times to get up and go exercise.

Something else that I thought would affect someone’s exercise level from reading this journal is that those people who do not really have good jobs and low education. This can affect their exercise levels because many of them do not know the actual benefits they can receive from exercising. Or many of them do not have enough time to do so, maybe working two jobs and having to take care of a family the last thing they think about is wanting to get their exercise in for the day. Also where people live has a lot to do with it, when someone lives in a nicer neighborhood it might be easier for them to have access to a gym or be able to run around their neighborhood without feeling unsafe. But when someone lives in a more unsafe community it is hard for them to find a place to be able to exercise comfortably.

I found this journal very interesting because of all the aspects it brings to light that might affect people and how they exercise. I never really thought that where someone lived would really affect their level of exercise or their background would affect it either. Many of these different aspects are not acknowledged by many people.

The article I read titled “Mental Health Providers May Have Biases” by Elaine Meyer talks about how mental health professionals do not want to live near someone with an untreated mental illness. Through a survey given to 731 mental health providers stated that they would not want to live or work with someone who has schizophrenia because they believed they could get violent. They also found that younger people and men are more likely to have negative attitudes towards someone with a mental illness. This is really interesting to me that someone who takes care of these patients and works with them on a daily basis would not want to have them close to them when they leave work. Taking into account that they understand the mental illness that one is going through. Many people think that those who suffer from mental illness’s are crazy and would much rather stay away from them as much as they can, but to think that mental health professionals also feel that way is very interesting. People have also created biases towards people with mental illness’s, when health professionals state that they do not want to be around someone with schizophrenia because they fear as if they might get violent. I would expect those who have more knowledge in that field would be more open to having those with mental illness around them to make them feel better.

https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/mental-health-providers-may-have-biases

The article “Emergency Medical Responders Confront Racial Bias” by Kristen Foden- Vencil, talks about how EMTs and paramedics run into the problem of bias on a daily basis. Jamie Kennel the head of emergency medical services programs in Oregon conducted a study on this topic. She looked at 104,000 medical charts from 2017 to 2019. During her research she found that forty percent of black patients were less likely to receive pain medication over white patients. I found this surprising because throughout the article she also talked about how minority patients were less likely to get pain medication over white patients. Some assume minorities are just acting to get pain medication. This was surprising to me because what is the difference between a white patients pain and a minority patients pain? And what gives the paramedic the right to refuse to give their patients something just because of the color of their skin. Kennel believes that paramedics do not do this intentionally but that they have unconscious bias which is something a lot of people have. Whites also tend to get a better not just care but experience then minorities when being treated by paramedics or EMTs. 

The source of this article was Kaiser Health News, I think this is a reputable news agency for the topic since they Kaiser is also a hospital. I think this piece is based on fact because she talks about a study that happened and not just about her personal opinion. It is organized logically and the language is free of emotion-rousing buzzwords. I think the audience she is trying to reach would be people of minorities and also paramedics, to show the unconscious biases that go on in the field. I chose this article because biases in the medical field really does interest me, and it is interesting to see how they can actually affect someone in a negative way.