June 20, 2001 - The New York Times published an article yesterday entitled, "Taking a Hard Look at Discrimination and Stereotypes in Medicine". While the NY Times web site requires visitors to register to view their articles, it is free.

Written by a physician, the article cites dialysis patients as one example of possible discrimination in health care. The article refers to a study published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that shows blacks not only waited longer than whites for kidney transplants, but that they waited longer to get on a kidney transplant waiting list. Here is the abstract of the NEJM study.

Here is an editorial entitled, "Racism in Medicine" from the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

August 24, 2000 - Researchers in the US and Canada have found that women are significantly less likely to receive kidney transplants than men.

A study released this week by the National Women's Law Center, FOCUS on Health & Leadership for Women at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and The Lewin Group showed that "America�s policy makers are letting women down with inadequate, ineffective and inconsistent health care policies that too often focus on illness rather than on health". (link is no longer available)

The National Women's Law Center provides a number of reports on the shortcomings of the US healthcare system in regard to women's health. (link is no longer available)

July 24, 2000 - Here is a story from American Medical News/Birmingham News entitled, "Studies: Blacks less likely to get quality health care"


[This message has been edited by Gary Peterson (edited 09-21-2001).]

Someone should do a study on overweight dialysis patients and the problems they encounter with staff constantly trying to "suck them dry" at each treatment. I have watched overweight patients cramp because their dry weights are too low. An overweight person will ALWAYS look like they have fluid on them, but that fluid is not necessarily readily accessible to the dialyzer. Some techs and nurses are too aggressive in their attemps to remove what they think is the 'right' amount of fluid. They seem to always misperceive body fat as fluid weight, which leads to intense cramping because they are going after fluid that isn't there. With more of our dialysis population being overweight, this problem will only get worse if attention isn't paid to the differences between an overweight patient and a 'regular' patient. Accusing an overweight patient of drinking too much water will only complicate the situation, and increase whatever level of noncompliance that may already exist.

To DialyzinDar To alleviate [sucking the overweight patient dry] Request that your unit try using a blood volume monitor,to manage fluid problems,and achieve ideal dry weights.