Racial Discrimination in Healthcare: A History of Inequality - Essay Sample

Introduction

Healthcare is no doubt one of the most basic requirements for any human being. However, this has soon turned out to be an auxiliary service to others, who have been sidelined due to their ethnicity and skin color. Racial discrimination in the field of medicine is not a recent case, but rather one that stems back in the 18th and 19th century. While this era exhibited open segregation of patients, and the complete barring of patients of color from accessing medical services and facilities, or the unauthorized manipulation and illegal use of the racial minority as lab rats, involuntarily used as medical experiments, the current decent world still faces this menace, just in a different form. Racial discrimination happens when one race claims superiority over another and uses this prejudice to justify any misconduct and injustice (Bhopal, 2001). Racial bias in the medical filed has significantly jeopardized service delivered, on both the patients and the doctors, as well as at the institutional level. It has also led to the development of complications, health, economic and social, to the patients. It is therefore critical to assess the extent at which racial discrimination has affected service delivery in medical facilities, as well as caused more harm regarding the health of the patient.

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The racial disparity has been considered the genesis of health disparities. This is a phenomenon that acts on the personal, interpersonal and institutional level, and one that has often resulted in strained doctor-patient relationships and encounters, poor service delivery and gradual depreciation of health in the country. Colored patients have hence been a victim to different forms of racial discrepancies. To track, this issue is the remarks that were made by the president of the National Medical Association john Kenny Jr. who stated that it is through racial discrimination that the African-Americans have been denied access to medical facilities, and even upon reporting, been put in questionable places. That it is due to this trend that the African-Americans have experienced the highest infant mortality, why childbirth is five times more likely to kill a black woman as compared to a white one, and why the life expectancy of the African-American is seven times less than that of their white counterparts Largent, 2018). While this is unfortunate for such individuals, what is even sadder is that many doctors and healthcare facilities have been conditioned by society to be biased. Many doctors hence are biased unconsciously, and this is due to a set of attitudes that they born within, and raised in (Nettle, 2019). Patients, therefore, have to go through incomprehensive tests, scolding, and stereotypes such as drug use and hence the denial of pain medication. This predicament has been rooted too deep in institutions and healthcare facilities.

Cultural differences have often been a barrier in many fields, and it is one that has caused miscommunications and misunderstandings between patients and doctors of different races. While this might be pointed at the doctors and healthcare professionals, the institutions they work under have dramatically failed to equip these doctors with the skills they would require to interact with these patients. This has hence sprouted to be a large-scale problem such as misdiagnosis of patients due to the lack of communication tools between the doctors and the patients Bhopal, 2001). Patients have often been left in pain, or diabetic comas simply because there is no one to translate their predicaments to their doctors. Diversity training is as crucial as medical training, and consequentially, doctors must be equipped with both to function optimally. Therefore, for a doctor operating is such a racially biased organization, they have no other choice but to act in ways that might seem racial.

While most attention has been granted to patients, doctors from racially minority groups have also faced racism in the place of work, while amidst their colleagues or with patients. The American healthcare hierarchy has often placed the healthcare provider at the top while the patient at a lower rank, whether the provider is white, African American or Hispanic (Olayiwola, 2016). However, this has not been the case to the African American doctors, nurses and healthcare providers. While the white coat gives them a temporal sense of power, the environment around them often has a way to remind them that they are powerless and insignificant. Patients are granted a right to choose the physician of their choice. Many patients, more so white patients often opt to have white patients treat them as they view them as real doctors. This is often brutal when it comes to black women practicing, as they are the double-brand of minority, powerlessness, and incompetence according to some patients. These doctors hence to prove themselves as deserving every time they handle patients, and they have to work twice as hard and be twice as talented to equal their white counterparts. Many healthcare facilities are hence torn between patient autonomy and their ethical values of nondiscrimination, and this is something they can sometimes have no control over. Most of the decisions of handing a patient to another preferred doctor lie with the present doctor and the patient, and many might decide to get over with the issue, while others might choose to build a rapport with the patient and change their perspective.

The patient is the crucial part of any HMO, and therefore, anything that can jeopardize their welfare is bad for business. Racial discrimination has over and over proved bad for business more so with cases of stress-related cardio-metabolic conditions. Racism can act as a stressing environment for patients with diseases such as inflammation, central adiposity, and cardiovascular function. In diabetes, it can affect a patient sugar level and hence lead to more unanticipated sugar levels (Wagner, Tennen, Feinn, & Osborn, 2015). Racial discrimination is thus associated with health risk behaviors and distress. Post-treatment monitoring and follow-up of the patient can also be maimed by the existence of racism in human medical resources.

Racism has. Therefore, more than once proved an economic, social, political and health red flag, and has often resulted in the poor delivery of services the medical fraternity has suffered the same fate, as both the patients and the doctors belonging to the minority ethnic groups have often sidelined. Patients might opt to be attended to by white doctors, and this is an efficacy killer for black doctors. Institutions have also been termed racial, by their negligence in availing diversity training to doctors, to enable them to interact with minority patients well. Racism has also been tagged to direct medical issues such as diabetes stress, and inflammation. While racial discrepancies are tied to the attitudes of many, it is only through the stripping off of these stereotypes can equality be achieved.

References

Bhopal R. S. (2001). Racism in medicine. BMJ Clinical Research 322(7301). Pp. 1503-1504. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.322.7301.1503

Largent, E. A. (2018). Public Health, Racism, and the Lasting Impact of Hospital Segregation. Public Health Reports, 133(6). Pp. 715-720. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033354918795891

Nettle N.K. (2019). Why racism in healthcare is still a problem today. Thoughtco. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/racism-in-health-care-still-a-problem-2834530

Olayiwola J. N. (2016). Racism in Medicine: Shifting the Power. Annals for family medicine. 14(3). Pp. 267-269. Doi: 10.1370/afm.1932

Wagner J. A., Tennen H., Feinn R., & Osborn C. Y. (2015). Self-Reported Discrimination, Diabetes Distress, and Continuous Blood Glucose in Women with Type 2 Diabetes. J Immigr Minor Health. 2015 Apr; 17(2). Pp. 566-573. Doi: 10.1007/s10903-013-9948-8