Gender and medical careers.

The concerns about physicians' career advancement tend to be raised in gender terms, because women presently constitute close to and will soon form a majority of the medical students in most western societies. The question is to what extent female and male medical students and residents today make similar or different career and lifestyle choices? Two major mechanisms have been referred to as the reason for gender differences in career paths for physicians. The major theoretical framework tends to be the socialization or sex-role theory and later versions of this explanatory framework.

Part-time physicians...prevalent, connected, and satisfied.

Objective: The health care workforce is evolving and part-time practice is increasing. The objective of this work is to determine the relationship between part-time status, workplace conditions, and physician outcomes.

Design: Minimizing error, maximizing outcome (MEMO) study surveyed generalist physicians and their patients in the upper Midwest and New York City.

Gender and images of heart disease in Scandinavian drug advertising.

Aims: This study examines the construction of the "heart disease candidate" in advertisements for cardiovascular drugs in Scandinavian medical journals.

Methods: All advertisements for cardiovascular drugs (n = 603) in Scandinavian medical journals (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) in 2005 were collected. Only advertisements that portray users (n = 289, 48% of the advertisements) were analyzed.

Developments in Scandinavian and American medical sociology.

This paper examines the similarities and differences in Scandinavian and American medical sociology. First, the issue of medicalization has not been as important in Scandinavian as it has been in American medical sociology. Second, women's health has been less explored in Scandinavian than in American medical sociology.

Long-term users of psychotropic drugs: embodying masculinized stress and feminized nerves.

This article examines long-term users of psychotropic drugs (43 men and 57 women) and their views on women's and men's reasons for using these drugs. The data came from written statements (N= 56) given on open-ended questions from a survey of users and from taped interviews with 10 respondents. Men's accounts expressed a notion of men as experiencing external pressures which created "masculinized stress.

Towards gender balance: but will women physicians have an impact on medicine?

The increasing numbers of women in medicine in western societies has raised the issue about their impact on medical practice. As a way of addressing the issue, this paper explores women's position in medicine in the Nordic countries, where the medical profession will soon be gender-balanced. Support for both a ghettoization and a vanguard argument for women physicians can be documented.

The rise and fall of Type A man.

The argument presented is that Type A man became the subject of a new medical discourse that in the late 1950s unveiled the "cause" of coronary heart disease. Type A man, identified by means of the Type A behavioral pattern, became visible through a new medical gaze. The rise of this new social and diagnostic category was through the medicalization of the attributes of traditional masculinity.

Women's health: issues and prospects.

An overview is presented of the research and theorizing on women's health accomplished over the past 25 years. This research is represented by two parallel strands regarding women's health: the first strand concerns the feminist and sociological research tradition, and the other focuses on the public health and epidemiological tradition. The conclusion is that Nordic research can offer new knowledge on women's health in both the quantitative and the qualitative research traditions when researchers adopt a gender-sensitive perspective.

The construction of gender and mental health in Nordic psychotropic-drug advertising.

The authors examine the advertisements for psychotropic drugs in the major medical journals of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden in 1975, 1985, and 1995, with the object of illuminating the gender construction of the portrayed user. Using both a longitudinal and a cross-sectional approach, the study looked for a common Nordic gender display and whether it varied over time. The Nordic journals clearly conveyed a message that psychotropics are a gendered product, but without any uniform pattern.

Gender display in Scandinavian and American advertising for antidepressants.

This study examines whether depiction of users of antidepressants in advertisements for antidepressants in the 1995 issues of the major medical journal in each of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden differs from that in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The results show that the people shown in the Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian journals are predominantly women, whereas depiction of users in the American and Swedish advertising is predominantly of couples. The portrayals in the 1995 advertising are of antidepressants as female gendered; a feature that was not seen in advertising for psychotropic drugs in the Nordic countries in the 1980s.

Mental distress--gender aspects of symptoms and coping.

The article examines men's and women's views on their reasons for mental distress and on their coping styles, respectively. The data were taken from written statements given on two open-ended questions from a survey questionnaire returned by 43 men and 57 women who were self-reported, long-term users of these drugs, and from taped interviews with 10 respondents. Men's accounts (n = 25) expressed a layered theory of mental health: alcohol was a remedy to alleviate temporary strain caused by external pressure, while the use of psychotropic drugs indicated a loss of a men's assumed self-regulatory powers and autonomy.

Cancer risk after metal on metal and polyethylene on metal total hip arthroplasty.

The incidence of cancer after metal on metal total hip arthroplasty (McKee-Farrar) and polyethylene on metal total hip arthroplasty (Brunswik, Lubinus) was compared with that of the general population in Finland. The mean followup time for the patients who had metal on metal total hip arthroplasty was 15.7 (9092 person years) and for the patients who had polyethylene on metal total hip arthroplasty it was 12.

They don't care: unemployed physicians in the Nordic countries.

Recent sociological research on the medical profession has been concerned with the profession's power and autonomy. So far, little research has focused on the total loss of the market value of a large number of physicians, that is, on the increasing rate of unemployment among physicians in some European countries. The author describes the extent of physician oversupply in the Nordic countries and examines the reasons for and implications of the growing unemployment among physicians.

Psychotropic drugs: long-term use, dependency and the gender factor.

The study examines the factors contributing to the initiation, continuation and termination of use among female and male long-term users of minor and major tranquilizers. The findings show the importance of the lay-referral system as a channel of introduction to psychotropic drug use, especially for men. The issue of dependency is explored both in terms of the users' own interpretation of its nature and their reports on the professional responses to their long-term use.

Ceramic endoprosthesis in total hip arthroplasty.

Aluminia-on-aluminia hip prosthesis with titanium alloy stem was used in 255 cases, for 143 patients with cemented acetabular cup and 112 with an uncemented screw cup. The average age of the patients was 62 years. Of the patients, 35 were treated bilaterally.

Advertising for psychotropic drugs in the Nordic countries: metaphors, gender and life situations.

Advertisements for psychotropic drugs which appeared in the leading medical journals in Finland, Sweden and Denmark were analyzed to identify the picture content and trends in advertising between 1975 and 1985. The most common picture was a metaphor, the frequency of which increased in the 1980s. The second largest picture category was a patient, the rate of which remained constant during the study period.

New Oslerians and real Flexnerians: the response to threatened professional autonomy.

As federal governmental involvement in U.S. health care had become a fact in the mid-1960s, a significant number of contributors to The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) had recommended educational reforms to save an autonomous profession.

Strategies in the education of humane physicians.

Various reforms to change the character of medical education have been implemented since the 1960s at American medical schools. The public demand for a more "humane" physician resulted in the incorporation of new sciences in the medical curriculum--behavioral sciences in the 1960s and 1970s and humanities in the 1980s. It is argued that broader structural changes in the American health care system underlie the need for these educational reforms, which in practice allow the medical profession to maintain its autonomy and control over its work.

Recurrence of deformity after removal of Harrington's fixation of spine fracture. Seventy-six cases followed for 2 years.

The radiographic result was assessed in 76 patients with acute unstable fractures of the thoracic or lumbar spine admitted during the years 1977-1984, and who were managed by early reduction and stabilization using Harrington distraction rods and a three-segmental posterolateral fusion. The radiographs were analyzed for anterior and posterior heights plus sagittal and frontal widths of the fractured vertebral body and the angles of kyphosis and scoliosis of the spine. All the measurements were made at admission, immediately postoperatively, and at the latest follow-up at least 3 months after removal of the rods, which was done as a routine procedure 6-12 months after the accident.

Outcome of closed injuries exceeding 20-unit blood transfusion need.

A series of 129 patients with closed injuries receiving more than 20 units (1 unit = 500 ml) of blood within the first 48 h of accident was analysed. The transfusion policy included type-specific crossmatched whole blood stored with citrate phosphate-adenine as the main replacement. One unit of fresh whole blood was transfused for every 5 to 6 units of stored blood.

The professional status of physicians in the Nordic countries.

The social position of physicians in the Nordic countries reflects the dominant role of the public sector in the delivery of health care. Physicians in Finland, Norway, and Sweden have always been part of a larger corporate social system; unlike physicians in Denmark, they have never been organized independently. This corporatization of medicine, however, has not resulted in the loss of autonomy that some American sociologists would predict.

The development of medical sociology in Finland.

This paper reviews the development and major directions of medical sociology in Finland. An interest in the social aspects of health can be traced to 19th-century social medicine. A general interest in medical sociology emerged in the 1950s but the research was mainly focused on the work setting and behavior of various health professionals.