<p>Cultural bias in health assessment has been asserted in various scientific reports. The aim of this study was to determine whether ethnicity effects how patients are represented in such medical certificates that are needed to obtain a certain Swedish social insurance. The setting was an analysis of 18 medical certificates for patients whose parents were born in Sweden, respectively of 18 medical certificates of patients whose parents immigrated to Sweden from non European countries. The main objective was comparison of the two groups to test for ethnical heteronormative representations of the patients and their parents. The method used is mainly based on critical discourse analysis in combination with Fowlers (1996) semantic tools used to decipher disparity in the discourse. The text analysis is combined with theories of Said (1978), Johansson (1993) and de los Reyes (2006) regarding social representations of the ethnically non European “The Others”. Results of the study show that presentations of the two ethnical groups generally do differ both when it comes to representations of the patient as well as of the parent. Substantial differences are found in descriptions of patient aggression and asocial behaviour. The results render the conclusion that ethnical heteronormative representations can be found even in such documents that have the purpose of objectively certifying individual circumstances, conditions and difficulties.</p>

Cultural bias in health assessment has been asserted in various scientific reports. The aim of this study was to determine whether ethnicity effects how patients are represented in such medical certificates that are needed to obtain a certain Swedish social insurance. The setting was an analysis of 18 medical certificates for patients whose parents were born in Sweden, respectively of 18 medical certificates of patients whose parents immigrated to Sweden from non European countries. The main objective was comparison of the two groups to test for ethnical heteronormative representations of the patients and their parents. The method used is mainly based on critical discourse analysis in combination with Fowlers (1996) semantic tools used to decipher disparity in the discourse. The text analysis is combined with theories of Said (1978), Johansson (1993) and de los Reyes (2006) regarding social representations of the ethnically non European “The Others”. Results of the study show that presentations of the two ethnical groups generally do differ both when it comes to representations of the patient as well as of the parent. Substantial differences are found in descriptions of patient aggression and asocial behaviour. The results render the conclusion that ethnical heteronormative representations can be found even in such documents that have the purpose of objectively certifying individual circumstances, conditions and difficulties.