Examples of participant comments on challenging inequities
| SUBTHEME | COMMENTS |
|---|---|
| Recognizing power privilege and disadvantage | “[Doctors are] in a position of power …. I think anybody that’s coming in for a problem is in a position of vulnerability.” |
| “I have the privilege of doing an examination on somebody … so right away, from history-taking, people are delving into very confidential issues, psychologically or organically. Not many people will allow other people to touch their body except maybe a physician or a partner. [It is] a huge privilege. Also, because we’re professionals, people will respect our opinions, and what we say goes a long way.” | |
| “There are privileges I’ve had as a white, employed woman that have not necessarily had anything to do with being a doctor. And there’s privilege that I have that goes along with being a doctor … [that] comes from the dominant paradigm that I participate in to a greater or lesser degree. [There] are also parts of who I am that connect me with people who don’t have the privileges that I have. So I often call on that experience to share anger [or] to hear rage.” | |
| Addressing structural roots of inequities | “I think we have to get [further] down to the roots of the problems. People don’t choose to be impoverished, it’s what happens to them through their lives, and … that is so closely linked to a person’s health. If our society is sick … we’re not going to solve those issues. And I don’t know if that’s where we should put the funding or if we should put it toward health care and meet those needs more directly. In an ideal world, we’d do both.” |
| “I’ve always felt that you [address] things within your practice on a one-on-one basis, and [address] things on a large[r] scale [with respect to] social policy and challenging education and that kind of thing. So my practice has been involved in that way.” | |
| Directly addressing discrimination | “Occasionally we’ve had inpatients who’ve absolutely refused to have [international] residents provide care. When they’re unwell, our feeling is that’s not the time to challenge them, so we tend to have the staff physician take over the role. But we will not let them leave the hospital without discussing how inappropriate their behaviour was.” |
| Medicine as inherently political | “As a family physician you are the gatekeeper. If you don’t have any idea about how that [the politics of health care] works, you are going to become a puppet …. They talk about a 2-tiered system it’s already here. If I want to send somebody for physiotherapy, a single mother on welfare, there’s no way that she can go for physiotherapy the next day. She has to wait 6 weeks. That’s politics.” |