When a doctor discriminates

[Anonymous]

A colleague of mine in the same medical system labeled a patient as “immigrant” from a X city in X country. I think he’s crossed the line. Would you say something?

[Anonymous]

Labeled where? How?

[Anonymous]

What? No, it’s not discrimination to note pertinent medical info on a medical record. Troll harder.

[Anonymous]

Make more sense

[Anonymous]

It can potentially be relevant when considering disease exposure and/or vaccine history

[Anonymous]

Troll

[Anonymous]

Medically, I can't think of any situation where the word immigrant makes sense. A person's ethnicity matters in terms of disease risk and predisposition to certain gene variants. Where a person lived for most of their lives also matters, in terms of exposure to carcinogenics/pollutants and disease.

But doctors usually write, for example: South East Asian (Vietnam), exposed to Agent Orange as a child. THAT is a highly pertinent sentence, since you have the ethnic category and the mutagen that is Agent Orange.

"Immigrant" is a loaded word and there is no medically-sound reason to use it.

[Anonymous]

No

[Anonymous]

The fact someone is an immigrant changes all assumptions about their entire health, nutritional and vaccine history

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Medically, I can't think of any situation where the word immigrant makes sense. A person's ethnicity matters in terms of disease risk and predisposition to certain gene variants. Where a person lived for most of their lives also matters, in terms of exposure to carcinogenics/pollutants and disease.

But doctors usually write, for example: South East Asian (Vietnam), exposed to Agent Orange as a child. THAT is a highly pertinent sentence, since you have the ethnic category and the mutagen that is Agent Orange.

"Immigrant" is a loaded word and there is no medically-sound reason to use it.

'

Really? you can't? I can. An immigrant didn't grow up here. They were not on the US vaccination schedule and had a lot of different exposures - maybe malaria, parasites, etc. Seems extremely relevant healthwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A colleague of mine in the same medical system labeled a patient as “immigrant” from a X city in X country. I think he’s crossed the line. Would you say something?

Where's the discrimination though? Was the patient treated differently? Charged more, made to wait longer?

[Anonymous]

Are you a physician?

[Anonymous]

You must be a really stupid doctor if you don’t think this information is medically relevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Medically, I can't think of any situation where the word immigrant makes sense. A person's ethnicity matters in terms of disease risk and predisposition to certain gene variants. Where a person lived for most of their lives also matters, in terms of exposure to carcinogenics/pollutants and disease.

But doctors usually write, for example: South East Asian (Vietnam), exposed to Agent Orange as a child. THAT is a highly pertinent sentence, since you have the ethnic category and the mutagen that is Agent Orange.

"Immigrant" is a loaded word and there is no medically-sound reason to use it.

This is crazy-it is absolutely an appropriate part of social history even absent something like agent orange exposure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A colleague of mine in the same medical system

Which system? Are you in DC, MD or VA?