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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: zeta1961 who wrote (96839)	1/26/2005 1:35:06 AM
From: Lady Lurksalot	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793711

Zeta1961, as someone who has documented patient medical information for many years and for facilities all over the United States, I believe it was in the middle to late 1970s that medical facilities were strongly encouraged to reference patient ethnicity. That said, it has been my experience that patients are rarely asked their ethnic background and that the person taking the medical history comes to a conclusion by merely eyeballing the patient, rather than asking the patient for specifics. - Holly

To: zeta1961 who wrote (96839)	1/26/2005 7:46:07 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793711

I have no idea whether indication of race has a state law component or not. My sister is the head of nursing at a hospital in Baton Rouge, I'll ask her later today and report back to you. As for the genetics of race -- how on earth would putting "white" on a chart flag Eastern-European ancestry? For that matter, how does "white" or "Asian" flag any genetic disease? I suppose you could argue that putting "black" will flag the one-in-600 chance that a black patient has sickle cell anemia, although my guess is that any child in the PICU has already had a CBC and some indication as to whether the blood work is abnormal. The assertion that reference ranges for medical tests have racial components is something I can't help but doubt. I've got several medical reference books on laboratory tests and the word "race" doesn't even show up in them. Is there really a different "normal" for blacks and whites on blood tests? If so, which tests? You were one of the people throwing the pejorative "PC" into the discussion. What about the well-documented fact that health care providers give different care to patients based on their race? For example, are less likely to aggressively treat cardiac symptoms in black men? Here is an example from the New England Journal of Medicine: medicinenet.com