No day is ever the same for most physicians who practice family medicine. For most of us, that is the very reason we chose the specialty. Variety is the spice of life and that phrase is pretty much the hallmark of our career. However, several days ago my experience was quite unexpected but all too familiar.
I walked into our break room and noticed two pharmaceutical representatives speaking to a nurse. I was not acknowledged, but the reps in all fairness were in the midst of a conversation with another individual. No problem. I preceded to get my food. The nurse left. I was waiting for the reps to speak to me but they continued to talk amongst themselves. As I was about to say something, in walks my partner who they immediately greeted with warmth and excitement. Now, my partner looks nothing like me and to be clear, he just graduated from residency less than two years ago and has far less experience than I but I guess he “looked” more like a doctor than I.
For many people in medicine, that disrespectful experience occurs all the time. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I am perceived to be the nurse, the cleaning crew, or the secretary. Some try to clean it up and say that I look so young or they say someone as pretty as I could surely not be the doctor. Really? Is this what I am to believe?
Little did I know that while I was dealing with my own microaggression of racism/sexism that a fellow colleague had experienced a similar encounter at the hands of a flight attendant on Delta Airlines. This particular African American physician was simply trying to provide assistance to a passenger in distress but was dismissed because she too I guess did not “look like a doctor.” As that story went viral, hundreds of pictures were shared on social media of stunning black women in lab coats, suits, and wearing stethoscopes around their necks with the same caption: #this is what a doctor looks like.
So why do I write about this in the health section of an award winning paper? I write because these encounters give support to why diversity in medicine is important.
By 2044, it is projected that more than half of the U.S. population will belong to a minority group. However, we are not on track in providing representative amounts of physicians of color in the workplace. Per the Association of American Medical Colleges, blacks and African Americans comprise only 4 percent of the physician workforce and currently, blacks make up only 6.3 percent of the total number of matriculants in medical school. Though this disparity is glaring on paper as you read it in black and white, it is far more apparent when you live it on a daily basis.
Even though increasing diversity is important to the ideals of culturally, competent care, it will not provide the sole solution to this country’s inequities and disparities. However, it is definitely a great start. Just maybe if those pharmaceutical reps and that Delta Airlines flight attendant had been exposed to greater diversity and frankly had been provided better training, they would not have ignited a firestorm of words and hashtags!
Your family doctor,
Denise Hooks-Anderson, M.D.
Assistant Professor
SLUCare Family Medicine
yourhealthmatters@stlamerican.com
