Healthcare Workers And Patients List What We Should ‘Denormalize’ When It Comes To Health

Photo via @jwiggi21/Twitter, @MDNidhi/Twitter

October 8, 2021, 1:27 pm

A U.S. doctor asked a simple question on Twitter that is generating hundreds of responses from both healthcare workers and anyone who has ever been a patient: “What should we denormalize in healthcare?” People these days often talk about what we need to “normalize,” referring to making something culturally “normal” in a society, but that often means also taking things that we don’t even think about and putting an end to them because they’re harming people on a mass scale.

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What should we denormalize in healthcare?

— Bryan Leyva, MD (@DrBryanLeyva) September 30, 2021

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Many of the responses to Dr. Bryan Leyva were fairly predictable, including people calling for an end to making patients worry about money while they’re trying to improve their health or simply stay alive. Plenty of Twitter users also pointed to various forms of discrimination suffered by multiple marginalized groups, especially those who have to deal with doctors and the system on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, others were a bit more controversial, sometimes sparking interesting discussions about health and the healthcare industry, including the idea that certain terms we’re used to hearing and take for granted may be doing more harm than good.

Here are just 25 of the responses we found most interesting:

1. How we think about burnout

Labeling burnout as an individual problem and requiring the healthcare workforce to engage in self-care, healing, and recovery from burnout during personal time instead of building it in to the workday.

— Kristi E. White, Ph.D., ABPP (she/her) (@KristiWhitePhD) September 30, 2021

2. Long silent exam room waits

Leaving people in exam rooms with the door shut for long periods of time w/o communication or explanation.

— Kristen Slack (@kristen_slack) September 30, 2021

3. Not educating patients on aftercare

Denormalize discharging patients w/out wound care supplies & thoroughly understood instructions.

— Medic Kim on 38th (@medickimw) September 30, 2021

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4. Treating women like baby machines

The notion that a woman’s future fertility is more important than her current wishes.

— Natalie Lanoville Fully vaxxed! Pfizerx2 (@NatalieLanovill) September 30, 2021

5. Fatphobia and ableism

Fatphobia/conflating weight and health, disbelieving patients when their conditions are difficult to diagnose, allowing ableism/implicit bias to color assumptions about quality of life, providing mental health treatment that ignores structural oppression.

— Maureen Brookes (@maureen_brookes) September 30, 2021

6. Only testing on white dudes

Testing meds on white men and then releasing them (hello, Ambien)

— sheologian (@sheologian) September 30, 2021

7. Refusing to believe patients and leaving them in the dark

1. Treating patients like unreliable witnesses to their own lived experience.

2. Not taking the time/putting in the energy to educate/inform patients about their own damn body/conditions/treatments.

3. Treating “mental illness” like something separate from human physiology.

— Dr. Jodie Wiggins PhD is vaccinated she/her (@jwiggi21) September 30, 2021

8. Healthcare cost mysteries

Not knowing how much something will cost AND it costing different things depending on your insurance coverage

— ReepRN, CNS (@reepRN) September 30, 2021

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9. Debt

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*First Published: October 8, 2021, 1:27 pm