Tag: women’s health

Amid the Wait

This personal essay, appearing in JAMA’s regular “A Piece of My Mind” feature, details a health care provider Cia Merin Bishop’s experience of going through unsuccessful infertility treatment while practicing medicine and caring for patients in a pediatric intensive care unit. The essay poignantly portrays the emotional experience of undergoing infertility treatment. It also speaks to what it is like to be both physician and patient and the coping, support, and resilience she marshalls in order to continue to function at work while dealing with the physical and emotional impact of her own medical treatment. The author points out that this experience is not uncommon, citing studies that suggest about a quarter of female physicians experience infertility and 31% of female oncologists reported infertility requiring counseling or treatment. As she says, “I write this piece in solidarity with other women physicians. I write this piece as an anthem of our strength. And I write this piece to acknowledge the suffering within us, as we tend to the suffering around us.”

The dual focus of this moving and readable essay would make it equally useful for discussions of infertility and reproductive health as well as physician stress and resilience. It could also be a useful in a course or unit on narrative medicine as an example of how physician’s writing their own stories helps to humanize medicine.

Dying to be Competent

“Dying to be Competent” details Cottam’s experience with healthcare discrepancies in her experience giving birth attributed to the fact that she’s a woman of color. Cottom describes having her physical pain be completely dismissed by healthcare professionals and claims that this resulted in the tragic consequence of her daughter dying shortly after birth. Through her personal story, Cottom illustrates the inequalities within healthcare due to structural racism, and the grave lack of care women of color too often receive. This essay could be used in classes to further investigate the structural forces within our society and how they are subsequently intertwined with healthcare as well as how it creates marginalization and lack of care within the healthcare system. Additionally it could be used to discuss the role of unconscious biases and stereotypes within the medical field.

Poetry for Sexual and Reproductive Justice

Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) is an organization compiled of researchers, activists, writers, as well as other experts devoted to negating ideologies and other harmful policies, philosophies, laws, etc. against sexual and reproductive health. They are dedicated to procreating programs and policies that are focused on social justice as well as human rights, including through their journal. One of the journals, “Poetry for Sexual and Reproductive Justice,” is a collection of 57 poems, some in Spanish, all written by individuals outside of the organization and relating to sexual and reproductive health. Some examples of the topics addressed in poetry are stigma around menstruation, sexual violence, contraceptives, and misogyny to name a few. This anthology could be used as a resource in a syllabus focused on women’s, reproductive, or sexual health. It could additionally be an aid within a creative writing class.

I Walked off Alone to get my Tubes Tied

In this informative essay, the author retells the stories of Gopli Gameti and Parvati Meghwal, two women in rural Udaipur from the Gameti community. Women in this community are often left behind as their husbands migrate for work. This story highlights the challenges faced by women in these rural areas in making health and life decisions independently.For example, women must seek healthcare (which can often be far away, expensive, or logistically difficult), navigate maternal choices like tubal ligation, and advocate for their own reproductive care on their own. Gopli also describes the sense of empowerment and liberation that comes with taking control of one’s own health when possible. This narrative can be incorporated into a class focused on gender studies, public health, or sociology. It provides real-life examples of how women in rural settings navigate healthcare decisions and family planning, specifically in the context of male migration. It can facilitate discussions on the intersectionality of gender, migration, and health, allowing students to analyze the socio-cultural factors influencing women’s choices.

Tamara: an Abortion Story

Tamara shares her story of seeking an abortion in the state of California shortly after finishing graduate school and starting a new job. Despite being a former pregnancy options counselor and health educator, she faced challenges in accessing abortion care within the university system and encountered stigmatization from protesters outside the clinic as well as from fellow patients. She also experienced complications from the procedure. Her narrative emphasizes the importance of supportive environments during the abortion process as well as the emotional and financial aspects of the experience. She also addresses the impact of restrictive abortion laws, such as those seen in Texas, on individuals seeking timely and safe procedures. In courses focused on reproductive health, women’s studies, or public health, Tamara’s story provides a firsthand account of the difficulties individuals may encounter in accessing abortion care, including navigating legal restrictions and facing societal stigma.

Grand unified theory of female pain

Loosely connected series of observations and thoughts about women and pain, some literary, some from the author’s own experience. One theme is how often womens’ pain is ignored or downplayed as bid for attention.

Wait times: Slipping through the cracks in the emergency room.

A man tells the story of watching his wife suffer agonizing pain for several hours from an ovarian torsion, eventually losing the ovary, and uses that as a starting point to describe how often women’s pain is dismissed by doctors and other caregivers, especially other women.

The story could also prompt discussion of how to account for the health care provider behavior in this story. Do we blame incompetent and insensitive health care providers? What features of their working conditions might produce the behavior this story recounts?

Aftershock

This documentary tells the stories of two Black women who died during or after childbirth, through interviews with their family members. The film examines the higher rates of infant mortality in the US, and especially for Black women, who are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from childbirth-related reasons than White women. The film shows how family members became activists for maternal health care. The award-winning film premiered at Sundance in 2022 and is (at the time of this writing) available on Hulu. It could be used to show how narratives can bring statistics to life, as well as the power of narrative for social change.