PATIENT EDUCATION SERVICES AS OPPRESSOR?

Abstract

The education provided to women patients has been used historically to deliver messages of social and medical control. I suggest ethical standards of practice to tilt the balance toward use of education to serve women's perceived needs. Specific steps include standards and guidelines that specifically address appropriate gender differences in educational messages, regular elicitation from women of educational needs and satisfaction with educational services, and research that specifically tests the impact of patient education services on women and on men. More broadly, patient education must be legitimated as an essential service for which providers and institutions are accountable, and the predominately nonphysician providers who deliver it must be empowered to challenge current practice. Current work on health care as a gendered system suggests that patient education practice can rid itself of only some of the gender bias that exists.