This is the final episode in our 4 part series on medicine’s sex and gender bias, in which we continue to focus on how this bias affects the care of people assigned female at birth. Today, we wrap up everything we spoke about in the previous 3 episodes, with an emphasis on ‘medically unexplained symptoms,’ mental health referrals, and stereotypes around being distressed about symptoms. We also continue to discuss results from a 2018 theory-guided literature review which looked into how gender bias and gender norms have affected medical treatment, specifically for men and women with chronic pain. Finally, we give tips on what we can do to receive better care now that we know the sex and gender bias exists. CONNECT WITH US! INSTAGRAM: @in16yearsofendo WEBSITE AND RESOURCES: insixteenyears.com



SOURCES: Clickable links at insixteenyears.com/episode50



Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery



Anke Samulowitz, Ida Gremyr, Erik Eriksson, Gunnel Hensing, ““Brave Men” and “Emotional Women”: A Theory-Guided Literature Review on Gender Bias in Health Care and Gendered Norms towards Patients with Chronic Pain”, Pain Research and Management, vol. 2018, Article ID 6358624, 14 pages, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/6358624



Bias In Medicine: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – Youtube video with U.S. comedian John Oliver.



Bransfield RC, Friedman KJ. Differentiating Psychosomatic, Somatopsychic, Multisystem Illnesses, and Medical Uncertainty. Healthcare (Basel). 2019;7(4):114. Published 2019 Oct 8. doi:10.3390/healthcare7040114