Gender Differences In Health Care

Background
The growing female veteran population is using more VHA services, making gender-related studies a necessity in the effort to promote equitable access to care (USVARD, 2014). In the clinical realm, health care providers do not treat gender differences, but rather treat one patient at a time: male or female (Institute of Medicine (IOM), 2011). In the research realm, gender differences studies in health services utilization are needed to create health care policies and interventions to promote equitable care (Östlin, Eckermann, Mishra, Nkowane, & Wallstam, 2007). Studying gender differences can also provide “a new perspective in differential susceptibility” (IOM, 2011, p. 6). This study is designed to give insight on how gender affects
AKI occurs in approximately 15% of hospitalized patients and 60% of critically ill patients, which varies based on the AKI definition used (Wonnacott, Meran, Amphelett, Talabani, & Phillips, 2014). AKI often results from receiving inadequate care while being hospitalized (Lewington et al., 2013). Inadequate care is usually given by untrained clinicians who fail to prevent or treat it effectively (Lewington et al., 2013). Improper AKI treatments lead to poor patient outcomes, such as mortality, CKD, ESRD, and other organ dysfunctions (Lewington et al., 2013). The most severe cases of AKI are in the hospital (Chawla & Kimmel, 2012), so I will focus on the inpatient hospital services utilization for this proposed study. Inpatient hospital services are the services the veteran patients receive while hospitalized in the VAMC. No existing studies focused on AKI treatment and outcomes by gender in the veteran population, but this study will potentially shed light on gender disparities that exist in veterans with
veteran population, so differences in the use of these VHA services by gender are expected (USVARD, 2014). This growth led to many research efforts studying the use of health services in the VA to detect any gender disparities. Gender-related studies on some kidney conditions, e.g., chronic kidney disease, exist. These studies do not include AKI, which is a commonly occurring kidney ailment, nor were they conducted on the veteran population. AKI studies on the veteran population exist, yet it is currently unknown how veterans diagnosed with AKI use VHA services by gender. This study is designed to examine gender differences in utilization among hospitalized VA patients (inpatients) diagnosed with AKI.
Purpose Statement
The purpose of this study is to examine differences in health service utilization by gender for U.S. veterans diagnosed with AKI while hospitalized at Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs). This study is also designed to examine differences in short-term outcomes, such as length of inpatient stay and inpatient mortality by gender. This study will also thoroughly describe study population of hospitalized VA patients diagnosed with AKI. Existing VA data will be used for this examination. A detailed methodology for this examination is provided in Chapter 3.
Conceptual