Deck 12: Other Mainstream and Alternative Health Care Providers

Question 1

Which of the following belong to an occupation that is both limited and marginal?

A)nurses
B)curanderos
C)pharmacists
D)chiropractors
E)direct-entry midwives

Answer 1

E

Question 2

Men who enter nursing

A)typically are held back by discrimination.
B)cluster in less prestigious specialties.
C)are overrepresented in emergency room work and underrepresented in pediatrics.
D)tend to have had childhood problems with sexual identity.
E)tend to have problems working under women.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Florence Nightingale

A)believed that men and women should occupy "separate spheres."
B)believed that nursing needed a hierarchical structure.
C)saw caring as inherently women's role.
D)all of the above
E)a and b only

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Curanderos

A)typically train through apprenticeships.
B)work primarily with young persons.
C)do not recognize any western categories of disease.
D)can legally bill insurance companies for their services.
E)are sued for malpractice more often than are doctors.

Question 5

Sociologists consider nurses semi-professionals, rather than professionals, because

A)nurses have considerable autonomy, status, and training, but remain subordinate to doctors.
B)most nurses have not attended college.
C)the ethic of caring has kept nurses from pushing for professional status.
D)women with high social status no longer typically enter nursing.
E)nursing lacks a code of ethics.

Question 6

Optometrists have obtained considerable social status by limiting their treatments to only one part of the body. This suggests that optometry is a

A)semi-profession.
B)limited but not marginal occupation.
C)parallel profession.
D)marginal but not limited occupation.
E)marginal profession.

Question 7

Which of the following is a parallel profession?

A)nursing
B)pharmacy
C)osteopathy
D)chiropractic
E)acupuncture

Question 8

Which of the following meets the sociological definition of a profession?

A)advanced practice nursing
B)chiropractic
C)midwifery
D)acupuncture
E)none of the above

Question 9

The history of osteopathy suggests how difficult it is to

A)move from being a marginal occupation to being a limited occupation.
B)maintain an independent and unique identity while becoming a parallel profession.
C)improve the educational standards of a field.
D)gain legal recognition when a field has many female practitioners.
E)gain legal recognition when a field lacks a scientific basis.

Question 10

In the early twentieth century, those nurses who fought to raise the status of nursing were hampered by

A)the ethic of caring and duty.
B)women's lack of political power.
C)ideas about women's proper role and character.
D)all of the above
E)a and b only

Question 11

Parents' decisions against vaccinating their children

A)have led to outbreaks of measles in the United States.
B)reflect solid scientific evidence regarding the dangers of vaccination.
C)are illegal across the United States.
D)are often supported by acupuncturists.
E)none of the above

Question 12

Which of the following have the highest status?

A)advanced practice nurses
B)registered nurses
C)licensed practical nurses
D)diploma nurses
E)nurses with bachelor's degrees

Question 13

Which of the following is true?

A)Acupuncturists believe that illness can be cured by blocking chi.
B)No scientific evidence supports the use of acupuncture.
C)In most states, licensure laws forbid doctors from using acupuncture unless they have trained specifically in that field.
D)Doctors have worked to strip acupuncture of its grounding in traditional Chinese medical philosophy.
E)Acupuncturists work primarily with wealthy clients.

Question 14

In the early twentieth century,

A)nursing schools regarded student nurses as a cheap source of labor.
B)student nurses spent long hours in classroom study.
C)trained nurses found it easy to obtain paid employment.
D)most nurses were black women.
E)most nurses were immigrants.

Question 15

Which of the following helped doctors gain control over childbirth?

A)Religious beliefs that women should suffer in childbirth.
B)The growing belief that childbirth was a natural biological process.
C)Popular prejudice against immigrants, women, and non-whites.
D)Laws supporting allopathic medicine.
E)Scientific evidence of the safety of doctor-assisted childbirth.

Question 16

Which of the following is true?

A)Lay midwives typically work at local clinics.
B)With low-risk populations, home birth conducted by experienced lay midwives is as safe as doctor-attended hospital births.
C)Babies delivered by lay midwives are significantly more likely to die than babies delivered by obstetricians.
D)Lay midwifery is illegal in all 50 states.
E)Lay midwifery is legal in all 50 states.

Question 17

Over the years, chiropractors have

A)improved their field's status by avoiding legal battles with the AMA.
B)lost the ability to request reimbursement for their services from insurance programs.
C)improved their status by increasing educational standards for entry into the field.
D)a and b only
E)all of the above

Question 18

Currently, some chiropractors believe that

A)immunizations are unnecessary.
B)they should serve as primary care providers.
C)spinal manipulation can cure most health problems.
D)all of the above
E)none of the above

Question 19

To gain professional status, osteopaths

A)fought against licensure.
B)increased educational requirements for becoming an osteopath.
C)pushed for the legitimacy of spinal manipulation and refused to use drug treatments.
D)fought against merger with allopathic medicine.
E)sued the AMA for job discrimination.

Question 20

Compared to modern direct-entry midwives, physicians more often

A)use unnecessary and potentially dangerous drugs and surgeries
B)restrain from using drugs in the delivery process.
C)support the demedicalization of birth.
D)offer home birth services.
E)earn modest incomes.

Question 21

When doctors first began medicalizing pregnancy, many women welcomed the change because it

A)offered guilt-free access to painkillers.
B)was less expensive than midwifery care.
C)was scientifically demonstrated to be safer than midwifery care.
D)was less expensive than osteopathic care.
E)allowed their husbands to participate in the process.

Question 22

Which of the following is true?

A)Dentists often work with acupuncturists.
B)At the time when Medicare and Medicaid were first developed, the American Dental Association supported including dental coverage in those programs.
C)Because insurance rarely covers dental care, dentists must spend even more time than doctors on paperwork.
D)Dentists are considered by sociologists to be alternative practitioners.
E)At the time when Medicare and Medicaid were first developed, the American Dental Association opposed including dental coverage in those programs.

Question 23

What similarities and differences do you see between curanderos and acupuncturists in terms of who they serve, how they enter the field, and their current social and legal positions?

Question 24

Compare and contrast the fields of dentistry and osteopathy. What factors have allowed medicine to dominate osteopathy but not dentistry?

Question 25

How have attitudes toward women and femininity affected the social position of nursing as an occupation, historically and currently? How do those attitudes shape the experiences of male and female nurses today?

Question 26

What factors make it easier for some mainstream health care occupations compared to others to approach or attain professional status? (Do not include alternative healers in your answer.)