After several high-profile incidents of racism or sexism directed at physicians of color, one medical student questions how such issues are dealt with during medical school and how the industry as a whole can become more aware of potential biases.
Vidya Viswanathan, a fourth-year medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, wrote an op-ed for Vox discussing how medical schools fail to prepare students of color and female students for the racism or sexism they will likely experience during their medical careers.
Ms. Viswanathan referenced the recent stories of two African-American female physicians who experienced varying levels of discrimination from flight attendants affiliated with Delta Airlines during two separate incidents in 2016 and 2018.
"It's interesting to me that medicine, with its protocols, pathways, and years of training, has no blueprint for supervising physicians on how to address inappropriate comments toward the people training under them. This reluctance to address the existence of bias in a healthcare setting hurts patients because it perpetuates a culture of silence — or worse, denial," Ms. Viswanathan wrote.
"It's better to have training for physicians on how to alter the medical environment to stop perpetuating bias against physicians and fellow colleagues, rather than training physicians how to bow their heads in the face of racism and sexism. … We should have training on how to listen when you are in a position of privilege."
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