Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

32 PATIENT & CAREGIVER EXPERIENCE Viewpoint: How scrubs reinforce sexist double standards By Cailey Gleeson A s hospitals relax their dress codes to pre-pandemic standards across the country, female physicians are preparing for a return of appearance-related sexism, according to an Oct. 16 opinion piece in The Atlantic by Trisha Pasricha, MD. Dr. Pasricha, a contributing writer at The Washington Post and a gastro- enterology research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, began her commentary by recounting an experience of misidentification with a patient. "When I entered the room, I had introduced myself as the doctor," she wrote. "I had also just explained, in great detail, a highly specialized procedure.…He still assumed I was a nurse, or a medical technician, or a physician assistant—anything but a doctor, especially his doctor." Dr. Pasricha wrote that the experience she described is just one example of how the pandemic "sparked the tinderbox" of gender inequity in healthcare. Dr. Pasricha went on to cite exhaustive research on gender inequities in healthcare, including a July 30 Journal of the American Medical Associa- tion study that found patients were about 20 percent less likely to assume that a woman wearing scrubs was a surgeon, compared with men. The study also found that patients consider a woman in scrubs to be "less professional" than a man in the same outfit. "It's about time we all recognized that male and female physicians are cut from the same cloth," Dr. Pasricha wrote. n What researchers found reviewing 250,000 long COVID-19 cases By Erica Carbajal M ore than half of COVID-19 survivors experience at least one symptom six months or more aer initially recovering from the illness, a systematic review involving 250,351 COVID-19 survivors found. e findings were published Oct. 13 in JAMA Network Open and are based on a systematic review of 57 studies. Of the 250,351 people in- cluded in the studies, 56 percent were men and 79 percent were hospitalized during their initial COVID-19 infection. e median proportion of people experiencing at least one symptom one month aer their ini- tial infection was 54 percent, based on 13 of the studies. At two to five months aer infection, 55 percent of people experienced at least one symptom (38 studies), and about 54 percent still had at least one symptom six months or more aer their initial recovery (nine studies). Four studies found 62.2 percent of COVID-19 survivors had abnormalities on chest imaging, the most prevalent pulmonary symptom. Meanwhile the most common neurologic symptom was difficulty concentrating, experi- enced by nearly 24 percent of people across four studies. e findings also identified generalized anxiety disorder (29.6 percent) as the most commonly reported mental health symptom in seven studies. General functional impairments (44 percent across nine studies) were the most common functional mobility symptoms, and fatigue or muscle weakness (37.5 percent across 30 studies) was the most common general and constitutional symptom. "ese findings suggest that [post acute sequel- ae of COVID-19] is a multisystem disease, with high prevalence in both short-term and long- term periods. ese long-term PASC effects occurred on a scale sufficient to overwhelm existing health care capacity, particularly in resource-constrained settings," researchers said. "Moving forward, clinicians may consider having a low threshold for PASC and must work toward a holistic clinical framework to deal with direct and indirect effects of SARS-CoV-2 sequelae." n HHS rolls out Spanish language app to help patients prepare for healthcare visits By Hannah Mitchell H HS launched a Spanish version of its QuestionBuilder app to help Latino patients prepare for their telehealth and in-person appointments. Three things to know: 1. The QuestionBuilder app was built to improve healthcare access for Latinos, who have the highest uninsured rate in the U.S., according to an Oct. 8 news release. Research also shows many Latinos consume digital content, and 85 percent of the community use a mobile phone, accord- ing to the release. 2. Users of the app select questions they want to ask their physician. The app allows patients to input details to prepare for their visit, such as the reason for the visit. They can email information to themselves or others and make notes during their visit. 3. QuestionBuilder also features content and questions sorted by the type of medical encounter. It also has videos and education material, a camera so patients can document visual symptoms, and links to Spanish resources from HHS. n

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