The increasing incidences of cultural and prejudiced stereotyping in the healthcare sector has been found to have a significant impact on the health of patients. The feeling of being judged by healthcare workers on the basis of stereotypes pertaining to gender, race, weight, age, socio-economical status, etc. can be really frustrating and depressing for patients who end up mistrusting their doctors in the process.

In the face of such stereotype disparities, patients come to rate their health conditions more adversely and are more likely to get prone to depression. Moreover, patients tend to restrain themselves from readily accessible medical help until they reach acute levels of medical suffering, disrupting the overall healthcare administration cycle of a region.

An important thing to be noted about such stereotyping is that they don’t appear out of the blue but instead stem out from the various public health campaigns held across states. A combined byproduct of these campaigns are the numerous negative stereotypes that come to associate with a precise group or class of people and spread like wildfire across the healthcare channels.

The result is that a certain class of people continue to feel the rage and threat of this unintended negative stereotyping and are most often left to face bitter experiences. The condition only seems to deteriorate for people who face threats from numerous stereotypes like color, status, etc. than for those threatened by a single identity.

The only way to break through this deleterious chain of prejudiced stereotyping, is to make people aware of the importance of living a healthy and happy life by minimizing their bitter experiences and reducing the threats of stereotyping. A good way to do this is to train the medical workforce about cultural and socio-economical differences while at the same time making patients feel more welcomed and acknowledged.

It is high time that healthcare providers broaden their reach and start implementing strong medical policies that explicitly display their tolerance and acceptance of diversities. Measures need to be taken to make people aware of the changing face of the healthcare sector as more and more healthcare providers are taking efforts to make medical help accessible to a broader class of people, desperately trying to fill-in the gulf created due to past disparities.

“It’s time to implement diversity in Thought and not just in Action!”