I don’t know about you, but the current election is must-see television. It has elements of all of the best soap operas, with elements of conflicts, drama, and cliffhanger endings. Every day brings a surprise. I have never heard more people, strangers, friends and the like engaging in random batter about the election and the candidates. 

Recently, I was checking out of a large bookstore chain and a grungy 20-something year-old male, made a disparaging comment about one of the female candidates noticing the headline on the newspaper that I was purchasing. It went something like this, “ I want a real woman in the White House. We need a woman who wears skirts and is more feminine.”  I was flabbergasted. My expectation that the attitudes of the generation of this young man, someone raised by dual-earning couples and parental 'role reversal' would be one of more openness and less judgment. Interestingly, all he could stammer was his feelings toward this candidate without any real argument. He was making his own value judgment because of her gender, and he added, “She’s too much like a man.” Not wanting to hold up the line anymore, I said, “Haven’t we moved away from slotting people into roles and expectations solely based on their gender or the color of their skin?” He had a blank expression on his face and I left perplexed. It was an unsettling conversation, for me because it highlighted how much work we have to do to allow individuals to verbalize their feelings without shouting them down, if we disagree. 

This election can provide us all with an ongoing opportunity to examine the beliefs, bias and old ways that we carry with us just because, “that’s the way it has always been”. Instead of arguing a point our focus should be listening to understand not to pull or push someone else to your side. With that brief encounter, I learned that age does not indicate attitudes and how important it is to form an opinion based on evidence or something real. The trouble within our society is that too often, we either totally disengage or make snap judgments about others. We can use this very interesting time in our country to re-engage ourselves in asking ourselves in why we make the assumptions about others that we do. Those attitudes play out in expectations,whom we identify with and how we trust. 

Let’s continue to have open, non-threatening dialogue with the aim of working through these surface issues with the goal of getting to the core of what is most important. If you are asking yourself, how does this apply to health hold on… Communicating within the clinical encounter is crucial. Our providers have their own biases based on how they “see” their patients. It affects prescribing practices and treatment recommendations. Patients also have biases. They may withhold information or in some cases stay silent, because they feel like their provider, “just won’t understand”. Start saying how you feel, and what you are feeling.