“See me for who I am”
Anonymous,
The University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
“Great! The Nepalese interpreter has arrived!”
Jennifer Edgoose
Executive Vice Chair
I was born in our nation’s oldest birthing hospital in Providence, Rhode Island to Korean immigrants and did not have an opportunity to visit their homeland until I was 30 years old. “So where are you from? No, where are you really from?” has been asked of me many times in my life, whether as a child in rural Indiana or a medical student in the heart of NYC. On this day I rushed into an obstetrical patient’s room at 2am disheveled and in blue scrubs to attend a precipitous delivery and my arrival was announced by a nursing student. I teach 3-hour workshops today to clinical learners about implicit bias, racism, privilege, and intersectionality but on that day my teaching was short – and I hope memorable – when I responded, “I am the supervising attending physician.”
I really should have corrected them
Anonymous,
Resident
When we were working in the hospital one night and your name was mispronounced repeatedly and eventually got brushed off, I really should have corrected them.
There she sat, days on end.
Adam Cordum,
Resident
There she sat, days on end. An older black woman full of a lifetime of stories, experiences, and moments of mistrust of the medical system. She sat, and spoke, and commanded attention with each breath. She sat, and waited, for the best place to take care of her recovery. She sat, but with her words and attitude stood tall and proud in the face of a system that had wronged her too many times.
What just happened was not okay.
Morgan White,
Resident
Whether it happens in a patient’s room or outside of it, it should be our responsibility as a department to call out/name when we see acts of racism or microaggressions because doing so builds a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Why won’t you get vaccinated?
Andre Biscaye,
Resident
It has been challenging trying to convince a lot of patients who express apprehension about the Covid vaccine to reconsider. When I talk with a Black patient, I wonder how the history of medicine and scientific research affects people’s thought processes and general distrust of this new medical intervention. I wonder if I have time to properly acknowledge this history or if doing so might be counterproductive to trying to get someone to trust me, a white male doctor.
Not the basis of every situation
Anonymous,
The University of Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
I’m not the basis of every situation.
Thank you for asking and listening to my experience as a minority, but know that it may not reflect the majority. Our stories are important, but having the onus to share in order to educate is something I still have to come to terms about.
I am NOT your model minority!
Anonymous,
UW Department of Family Medicine and Community Health
The model minority stereotype is pervasive and cuts across all fields, including health. A few years ago, after several visits to the Emergency Room and then to Urgent Care (over a 5-day period), I was sent back to the ER for a CT scan to confirm the UC physician’s diagnosis of my condition. However, the ER physicians were not convinced of the condition that the CT scan confirmed. Their implicit biases about Asian-Americans as a model minority who do not have significant health problems prompted them to call another specialty department to examine me (twice). As the ER physicians discussed my case (in front of me), their main argument was that I was not white and therefore, assumed that I did not eat “American” food but rather ethnic foods, which they considered to be healthier. So, what I heard was, “she’s too young, too thin, not white, and doesn’t eat American food…” Thankfully, they DID start me on a round of two different antibiotics to treat my condition as they discussed this (I was pretty sick with a fever). Implicit biases, racial stereotypes, and microaggression in play in this situation.
I was saying your name wrong
Maddie Batzli,
Staff
For the first month that I knew you. It would have been so easy to just ask, the first time we met, and not make an assumption based on how it looks on paper. You shouldn’t have to settle: it is my responsibility to do better. It is your right to be welcomed.
“Why don’t you just get it?”
Andrea Kratzke Nelson
I personally have to take multiple pills each day. When I worked in Englewood, a primarily black and lower socioeconomic neighborhood in Chicago, it seemed that people struggled to take one or more pills each day, even after we set up a home delivery pharmacy for them and eliminated their copay. I was so frustrated that they could not do one simple thing like take a pill, like I do, even when all of the barriers I perceived them having were already taken care of. But of course there is a lot more there than just getting pills from a pharmacy. Nothing about their lives and mine are the same (Chicago is very neighborhood and culturally segregated) and so it was so much more than just getting access to medicine that kept them from taking it.
Wisdom: What does it look like?
Shelly Shaw,
Associate Director, Office of Community Health
I’ve been wondering about how we define wisdom in a world full of credentials: MDs, DOs, PhDs, MPHs, MBAs, the list goes on. What credential do you get for being a young, black, or brown kid growing up in Madison, WI? What credentials do you get for being their parents? What credential do you get as a person seeking healthcare, in a system full of forms and boxes to check, and as you scan all those boxes you don’t see a single place where you belong? How do we name and credential that wisdom? With all of that experience, why is that wisdom too often missing from decision-making tables? Why is that wisdom missing from our faculty rosters? Why is that wisdom missing?
Knock, knock and then you enter.
Yusuf Abdullah,
Resident
Wonder what they have been thinking. You break the silence and crack a smile. Introduce yourself first, and then you greet them. Tell them you are very pleased to meet them. And proceed with questions in a gentle style. Rinse, repeat, and continue the cycle.
This story is about the experiences of a physician of color as he goes through his day and meets patients. Sometimes he wonders if the patients he meets will judge him based on his color, ethnicity, appearance. I am certain that this is not a unique experience.
