Author and physician Danielle Ofri’s latest piece in The Lancet outlines “A Tense Moment in the Emergency Room.” Ofri describes the concern of an African-American medical student as a “young man stormed into the doctors’ station… and held up his toddler. ‘My baby’s choking and you guys aren’t doing anything.'” The medical student knows she is least senior of the gathered medical professionals, but she also is the “only African-American person among the white doctors” and is “acutely aware of the fraught dynamics,” given the child’s father is also African-American. She considers stepping forward to assist, even though per her estimation the child is not in imminent danger. Instead, she holds back. Ultimately, the “highest person in the medical hierarchy” asks the man to return to his room and the situation escalates.
Ofri notes what anyone who has visited or worked in a hospital is keenly aware of: the hospital is a stressful place. Given the already heightened tension, if you “[a]dd in issues of race, class, gender, power dynamics, economics, and long wait times … you have the ingredients for combustion just hankering for tinder.” The broader issue is that “racial and ethnic disparities in medical care are extensive” and “implicit or unconscious bias is still entrenched in the medical world.” How have you witnessed this issue in giving or receiving medical care yourself? Do you know if the organization you work at, or receive medical care from, is working to address implicit bias in medicine?
The medical student’s reaction to the father differed from her white colleagues: “When the father stormed into the doctors’ station, she saw fear and concern; her fellow physicians saw aggression.” These issues are complicated by the various power dynamics that exist in medicine. On one hand, the medical student wonders if she would be treated similar to the father if she were a patient there, given they are both African-American and therefore “look the same to the outside world.” However, in that situation she was both “part of the powerful group—the doctors—but as a medical student, she was singularly powerless… a medical student might just as well be part of the furniture.”
Ofri contends that in the medical field we often justify our behavior in tense encounters “because we surely know that we are not racist, or sexist, or homophobic. We are good people and we have chosen to work in a profession dedicated to helping others, right? How could our actions possibly reflect bias?” Ofri calls us to seek out stories, to listen to one another. Medicine, after all, “remains an intensely human field: illness is experienced in human terms and medical care is given in human terms. We humans bring along our biases and stereotypes—that is true—but we also bring along our ability to communicate and to listen.” I know this is a skill I need to continually cultivate in my own practice. How might you listen better today?
Writing Prompt: Have you experienced a similar situation as this medical student regarding power dynamics, wether related to race, class, gender, or level of training? Think about such an event, either during your medical training or when encountering a medical professional as a patient. How did the people around you react differently? How did you react? Did your perspective of the incident change over time? Write for 10 minutes.