For anyone doubting these experiences, I am a US medical student, and implicit biases and racism are big topics we are taught and made aware of due to physicians profiling their patient whether intentionally or not.
This is especially common in the ER where many people without PCPs come in for issues that are generally handled by a PCP. One of the more difficult things that physicians struggle with is balancing time with the quality of care they provide to their patients. Profiling makes the “time” component easy, but obviously that results in very poor quality healthcare.
No one should be doubting people’s experiences of racism and discrimination in the ER and beyond. Doctors are people too, and the bigoted behavior you see in other professions are just as likely to appear with your doctor.
I appreciate that, and I want to offer hopefully a more positive outlook. These topics are becoming standard courses in the US medical school curriculum, as in they have to be taught to medical students.
It won’t solve every problem, of course, but the curriculum is way more patient-oriented than it used to be instead of being a simple “solve disease” kind of curriculum, which is what most of the doctors you see today are taught with.
I rarely comment on lemmy, but I had to say something against the few people who were saying these experiences aren’t valid.
Discrimination is real, and don’t assume Doctors are perfect because they’re not. Of course be open-minded and don’t be antagonistic to the ones who are legitimately trying to help you, but if you feel your care wasn’t great, then that’s very likely a failure on the physician’s part.
I’m a medical student that is aiming for emergency medicine, and threads like these are a special kind of demoralizing. When I was working as an ER tech, there were a fair few times where aggressive or combative patients would only let me get anywhere near them for anything because I never showed any judgement or disdain. Not that I blame my coworkers. It’s hard to treat someone nicely after they fake having an overdose in the lobby and then assault one of the nurses after they “wake up” from the narcan.
I honestly think that most medical workers are a victim of the healthcare system and pharma drug pushing as much as the patients. If there was affordable healthcare and a focus on helping people live healthy lives, there wouldn’t be so much drama and life threatening decisions.
The presumption that every patient is someone who fakes an overdose until proven otherwise is precisely why so many people in this threat is suffering. We aren’t asking you to serve narcan on a silver platter to people who fakes an overdose. We’re just asking to be treated as humans, with empathy, without preconceptions about who we are or why we are at the ER based on our skin color, sex, age, and chronic medical conditions.
Trust us, we know what it’s like to feel demoralized at the ER. I’ve had enough close calls of neglecting life threatening conditions, enough of ER staff laughing off my pain, enough ER staff deliberately manhandling me and hurting my tender points to prove I’m ‘overreacting’, enough of waiting 6 hours only to be sent home with nothing and in more pain than I was to begin with, enough of being left to cry in pain for hours at the ER and being ridiculed for it. Many of us are demoralized to the point of fearing the ER and avoiding it even under life threatening circumstances, because going through another ER experience might be the tipping point to actually kill ourselves.
There is only so much suffering, pain, and psychological torture the human mind can endure. Most people in the ER have no idea how much chronic pain sufferers have at stake when going to the ER. I have had ER visits that left me more broken than being sexually assaulted as a teen. I trusted doctors, I trusted the hospital, and I trusted that I was in a safe space. Being painfully jabbed, mocked, laughed at, and told im lying and drug seeking were the last things I was expecting. Nothing will repair this breach of trust, because the stakes are too high. I cannot gamble away my physical and mental health for the sake of improving moral in ER staff. For you, at worse you become disillusioned with your career. For me, it’s my life that I’m risking.