Growing up, I was told that it is not polite to talk about private topics like religion or sexuality. During medical school, I never received any formal classes on how to communicate with my patients about these topics. Yet, society seems to have changed, and it is not uncommon to make connections through religion, meditation, music, dance, support groups and studies, and alike. Additionally, recent data from a variety of sources support the concept that our whole person—including ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion and/or disability—is important when we deliver care, and when we receive it. [1,2]
This last issue of AANS Neurosurgeon, entitled “The Current Lenses of Neurosurgery,” focuses on ”Racial, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion and Disabilities: How Can We Better Serve our Patients?” The overarching theme of this issue is to explore aspects in our own lives that have an impact on our profession, such as differences in ethnicity, language, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and disabilities. A deeper appreciation of such differences can help us in becoming a more welcoming and open community, and ultimately providing better service to our patients.
Language barriers have been recognized as obstacles for achievement of high-quality healthcare delivery. In the current issue, Quinones-Hinojosa describes how his bilingual and bicultural background help him be a better neurosurgeon by appreciating the differences of others in the article entitled “The Joy of Being Bilingual, Bicultural and Building Bridges.” “The Challenge of Working with Disabilities” by Youngblood and Murasko shares the experience of a highly successful neurosurgeon who overcame her disabilities. Gaisa and Germano present the topic of “Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation,” with particular emphasis on why familiarizing with these topics could be beneficial to better serve our patients and improve our neurosurgical practices. Woodrow’s article entitled ”Patients’ Advocacy” details our role in this arena. Many of the important aspects of advocacy are already ingrained in our daily practice. Perhaps a few can still be worked in as we learn more about this topic. Racial diversity in neurosurgery is growing, and so is the understanding of the multi-faceted challenges revolving around races and ethnicities. Barthélemy’s excursus over “Racial Background in the Neurosurgery Eco-System” provides a perspective about some of the realities currently evolving in our field. “Mindfulness, Meditation, My Religious Space” by van Thyn, Fessler, and Germano takes us through a seldomly traveled road. Questions about religion, not dissimilar to gender identity and sexual orientation, are an unconformable topic for many of us because of a lack of preparedness on how to tackle the topic. Yet, these aspects are very important to most of us neurosurgeons and to the majority of our patients. Hopefully the short snippets about these topics will inspire each of us to learn more about them, to start.
As a guest editor for the “The Current Lenses of Neurosurgery” AANS Neurosurgeon, I’d like to thank Dr. Aruna Ganju, Editor, for giving us the opportunity to collaborate in sharing aspects of the changing landscape of neurosurgery. We hope that sharing experiences and allowing each of us to explore territories perhaps a bit “out of own comfort zone” will help us to grow into a stronger community and to improve the care we deliver to our patients.
Reference
1. Kørup A, Søndergaard J, Alyousefi NA, Lucchetti G, Baumann K, Lee E, Karimah A, Ramakrishnan P, Frick E, Büssing A, Schouten E, Butcher W, Hefti R, Wermuth I, de Diego-Cordero R, Menegatti-Chequini MC, Hvidt NC. Health professionals’ attitudes toward religiosity and spirituality: a NERSH Data Pool based on 23 surveys from six continents. Front Psychol. 2021 Nov 18;12:756080. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.75608 PMID: 34867654
2. Laldjising E, Sekercan A, Gadjradj PS. Neurosurgeons’ opinions on discussing sexual health among brain tumor patients: Room for improvement? J Clin Neurosci. 2021 Dec;94:292-297 PMID: 34863453
