(Press-News.org)
In the 2009 film "Gifted Hands," based on a true story, the audience follows Black neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson as he successfully performs three risky surgeries, earning praise from the media and medical community. This movie was not only a hit with critics and audiences, but it also inspired Bismarck Christian Odei, MD, an assistant professor in radiation oncology at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, to follow his passion.
“Seeing a physician who looked like me, portrayed positively and successfully on screen, was both inspiring and transformative for me,” says Odei. “On a larger scale, seeing a diverse demographic of physicians in the media can influence the public and beckon a wider group of the rising generation towards medicine.”
Odei is now a prostate cancer specialist and he continues to advocate for diversity in medicine. This passion pushed him to lead a team of researchers to investigate the representation of women in medicine in films. Recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, a study used IMDB.com, to look at movies from 1990–2020 that referenced physicians in their plot summaries, keywords, and credits. The team tallied the gender of the characters who were physicians, as well as the race, ethnicity, and age of the character.
Out of the 1,226 movies with 2,295 characters that were physicians, only 18% were women, while 81.4% were men. While the percentage of women physicians portrayed in films increased per decade (about 2% every 10 years), most physicians in movies are men. When in reality, these numbers are much different.
About 36% of practicing physicians are women and approximately half of all current medical students are reported as women, signaling equal proportions of men and women physicians in the coming years. Women have been historically underrepresented in professional roles in movies, continuing to perpetuate gender biases.
In addition, the study found that there is even less portrayal of physicians in historically underrepresented groups in cinema. These results help paint a picture of why some people may feel out of place as physicians, a phenomenon known as imposter syndrome.
“There are stereotypical views of what a physician is supposed to look like due to historical reasons and the messaging surrounding these realities,” says Odei. “When someone falls outside the boundaries of these stereotypical portrayals of physicians, they may feel out of place and wonder if they belong.”
This research also showed that among G and PG movies, only 21% of the 2,295 movies portrayed at least one woman physician. Those watching these movies, typically younger and more impressionable viewers, rarely see women as physicians.
The portrayal of women in medicine in films is important as it not only reflects the perception of women in society, but also helps shape attitudes in future generations, according to Odei.
“We felt that most movies could still maintain the integrity of the plot and scenes if female physicians were substituted in for their male counterparts,” says Odei. “This further underscores the crucial role of screenwriters in enhancing the portrayal of women in film.”
Seeing women positively portrayed as physicians will help normalize these roles for future generations of budding scientists interested in medicine as a career and for those who are seeking treatment as a patient, he says.
“In medicine, having patients have a sense of confidence in a competent physician, is critical. This is particularly true in oncology when we are often dealing with a life and death-situation,” says Odei. “You want the patient to feel that they are in safe hands. So, their perception of what safe hands look like is critical. For these reasons, we cannot undermine the value of the media in framing expectations. For patients at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, it is important that they come in and feel comfortable with the diverse array of physicians who will be attending to them.”
Odei and his team hope to continue researching the impact of media representation of physicians on patients, and also capture how other underrepresented subgroups are being portrayed in the media. Additionally, they hope to expand their research to examine representation within other popular media types.
The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute including P30 CA042014 and Huntsman Cancer Foundation.
About Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah
Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U) is the official cancer center of Utah and the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in the Mountain West. The institute is leading the world in scientific discovery, and turning it into unsurpassed cancer care, transforming hope into a reality. Huntsman Cancer Institute focuses on delivering a cancer-free frontier to Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming (The Area We Serve). Huntsman Cancer Institute is home to over 300 clinical trials, with over 237 research teams studying cancer at any given time and more genes for inherited cancers have been discovered at Huntsman Cancer Institute than at any other cancer center. Huntsman Cancer Institute’s scientists are world renown for understanding how cancer begins and using that knowledge to develop innovative approaches to treat each patient’s unique tumor. Huntsman Cancer Institute was founded by Jon M. and Karen Huntsman.
END
Law enforcement officers in the United States own firearms at high rates and rarely engage in secure firearm storage, which could increase their risk for suicide, according to a Rutgers study.
The researchers, whose study appears in the journal Injury Prevention, examined data from 369 law enforcement officers in the U.S. Information about firearm ownership, storage, suicide risk and demographics were included in the present study.
Overall, 70.5 percent of law enforcement officers report owning a firearm. The most common type of firearms owned were handguns (79.7 percent) followed by shotguns (61.1 percent) and rifles (57.5 percent). A sharp majority, 78.9 percent, ...
New research from Japan published in the Ecological Society of America’s journal Ecology suggests that increasingly severe weather driven by climate change may push oceangoing seabirds to their limits.
In August 2019, Kozue Shiomi, a seabird biologist at Tohoku University, attached GPS bio-loggers to 14 adult streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) from a nesting colony on Mikurajima, a small island near Tokyo, as part of a study on the species homing behavior.
In September of that same year, an exceptionally powerful storm, Typhoon Faxai, barreled into southeastern Japan, causing considerable physical damage to the mainland. But the typhoon, ...
DENVER/Oct. 25, 2023 – A recently published paper in Animal Conservation provides crucial insights into the health of sihek, a species eradicated from its native habitat and that may now face threats in captivity. The latest data underscores a stark gender disparity, revealing that female sihek are at greater risk for death and disease than their male counterparts.
As part of an ongoing Morris Animal Foundation-funded study, researchers at The Zoological Society ...
INDIANAPOLIS — It’s no secret that a good night’s rest can do wonders for one’s health, but those who struggle with insomnia have a nearly 50% increased risk of cardiovascular disease. One scientist in the School of Science at IUPUI will spend the next five years trying to figure out how those risks can be reduced.
Jesse Stewart, a professor of psychology at the school, has received a five-year, $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for a project named the Strengthening Hearts ...
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2023
MINNEAPOLIS – Older people who have higher levels of triglycerides, a type of fat, may have a lower risk of dementia and a slower cognitive decline over time compared to people who have lower levels, according to new research published in the October 25, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. While the study found a link, it does not prove that higher levels of triglycerides prevent dementia.
Triglycerides are fatty acids and are the most common type of fat in the blood. Triglycerides contribute ...
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE UNTIL 4 P.M. ET, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2023
MINNEAPOLIS – People who have experienced traumatic events in childhood such as abuse, neglect or household dysfunction may be more likely to experience headache disorders as adults, according to a meta-analysis published in the October 25, 2023, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. This research does not prove that such experiences cause headaches; it only shows an association.
“Traumatic events in childhood can have ...
Brittle star fossils found in South Africa are over 410 million years old, the oldest known examples who lived at high latitude
###
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0292636
Article Title: Earliest known ophiuroids from high palaeolatitude, southern Gondwana, recovered from the Pragian to earliest Emsian Baviaanskloof Formation (Table Mountain Group, Cape Supergroup) South Africa
Author Countries: South Africa, Luxembourg
Funding: RWG: Millennium Trust, South Africa (no number). https://www.mtrust.co.za ...
In a study of different types of distraction involving more than 1,000 participants, researchers statistically derived a novel measure—dubbed the “d factor”—that could represent a person’s general tendency towards distraction and may be linked with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Han Zhang of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 25, 2023.
Prior research has explored various types of distraction, such as external stimulations, repetitive ...
A new study explores themes in Twitter discussions of deepfake videos related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the potential for real videos to be mistaken for deepfakes and for deepfakes to fuel conspiracy theories. John Twomey of University College Cork, Ireland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 25, 2023.
Created using artificial intelligence, deepfake videos typically feature a person saying and doing things they never actually did in real life. Deepfake technology has advanced considerably, sparking concerns about its potential harms. ...
Ancient people immigrated to Cancun Island and were treated just like locals, according to a study published October 25, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andrea Cucina of the Autonomous University of Yucatan, Mexico and colleagues.
The Late Postclassic (AD 1200-1500) in the northern Maya lowlands was a period of major changes, including the development of many settlements along the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, influenced in part by expanded trade routes. Previous research has found that these settlements were home to many non-local individuals, but it remains unclear whether these people were treated as “foreigners” ...
