Samantha Kilbane
Script:
| Hello, my name is Samantha, and I would first like to thank you for taking the time to listen to this podcast. For today’s conversation, I want to expand upon an experience that I had while working in one of Ohio State’s hospitals. To give some background about myself, which will help to give some context about my experience that I will soon talk about, I am currently a senior at Ohio State, and upon graduation in May, I will work in the medical field, to be completely vague. I currently work at one of the Ohio State hospitals to help aide my education, experience, and knowledge base for my future career.
One night at work, I was working in the ICU, which has had a decent number of patients with COVID-19. The unit had just gotten word that a new admission was coming to the ICU from the emergency department, and had just tested positive for COVID-19. I’m sure most of you have heard about the symptom set of this viral infection, if not or to serve as a refresher, the most common symptoms include fever, shortness of breath, a dry cough, and difficulty breathing. It was passed along in report that this new patient that was coming to the unit was having extreme difficulty breathing. As a medical professional, hearing this in any patient is of the utmost concern. If a patient is having trouble breathing, or cannot breathe properly, this can quickly turn into a medical emergency and may escalate to a life-or-death situation. A few minutes passed and the new patient quickly arrived to the unit. Once they were in the bed of their new room, the patient was quickly flocked by nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists to assess the patient, administer medication, insert IVs, analyze their vital signs, and overall determine if the patient is in a stable condition, or if advanced medical care is necessary. The patient arrived slightly drowsy, but as soon as the health care providers started assessing the patient, he took one look around the room, threw he arms out to the side of him in a sweeping motion and shouted, “where are all of the people who look like me?! I need a doctor who looks like me!!”. This happened about a few months ago, and I can still vividly remember the frightened look in the patient’s eyes. In the moment, I did not give much thought to the patients remark, as the main focus of the moment was ensuring his medical stability. However, after the hours, days, and weeks passed after this encounter, I kept thinking about this situation and the depth of what truly happened. What I realized occurred in this moment, was an African American patient was scared and intimidated to receive care from only Caucasian doctors and nurses. To relate this moment to the theme of this podcast segment, and answer the question, Is This Racist? I would answer no. However, I would adamantly argue that in this moment, the patient was scared of experiencing racism – so scared in fact, that he was afraid that racism was going to cost him his life in the sense that he was afraid he wasn’t going to receive the medical care that he needed. Upon further thought of this situation, I was prompted to think about why the patient felt this way. To help me better assess this situation, I feel lucky that I am currently studying in a program that educates us future health care providers about the pandemic in health care that is racism, and the impact that it has on the health of minority groups based on ethnicity. This week in class actually, we learned and discussed about the recent announcement and initiatives that are taking place within the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center regarding racism in healthcare. This summer, executive vice president at OSUWMC and chancellor of health affairs Dr. Harold Paz announced OSU’s consideration of racism a social determinant of health. Also in this article by Health Leaders, the author explains Dr. Paz’s initiatives to create groups to “promote racial equity in Ohio”. To give you a better understanding of this declaration of considering racism a social determinant of health, let me provide you with the explanation of what a social determinant of health is according to healthypeople.gov, these are factors and conditions in the environment that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality of life outcomes and risks. Other examples of social determinants of health include access to food and safe housing, access to education and job opportunities, and socioeconomic conditions. So how does racism fit into this category of determining an individuals health outcome? In a TedMed talk titled “how racism makes us sick”, sociologist David Williams talks about the racism’s effect on health and health care. He states, “every 7 minutes, a black person dies prematurely in the US” – this staggering statistic shows that the health of blacks and whites is not equal. According to Williams, the biggest impact of lack of equality of care in the health care field comes from implicit bias; he describes it in this clip : (6:30-7:41) play clip. Aside from being on the receiving end of bias from a health care provider, Williams notes that African Americans often have poorer health overall due to the racism, bias, and prejudice they receive in everyday life. Health conditions such as increased blood pressure, increased cortisol levels (stress hormone), diabetes, and heart disease are at staggering levels within the African American community. Pairing any of these diseases with a COVID 19 infection, greatly increases the symptoms, morbidity, and mortality of the illness. This might be one of the factors that leads to the statistic that African Americans are 2x more likely to die from COVID 19, according to a PBS News hour video titled, “how covid 19 is highlighting racial disparities”. This same PBS video ends with the presentation of a statistic: “around 5% of physicians in the US are black, per data from 2018”. This fact brings me in to the next point that I would like to talk a bit about – how does this situation I experienced at work, and the points that I have made thus far, relate to the themes of the course? In health care, and health overall, African Americans and other minority groups are forced into the category of other. Yourself, in comparison to other, has been a major theme in this course – and we have learned to therefore be cognizant of our thoughts and actions based on these ideas. This idea proves true in the health care field, as well as any other line of work. The majority of healthcare providers are caucasion, so when a patient is African America, the health care provider subconsciously sees the patient as different from themselves. Statistics show that Caucasians have lower rates of chronic disease and a higher life expectancy compared to African Americans – this evidence is proof of implicit bias in healthcare. So, to wrap this whole discussion together, what does this mean for the listener? I asked myself this question when I decided to speak about this topic. I understand that not everyone listening to this will be going in to healthcare, so what do I want the listener to gain from this discussion? I quickly answered this posed question to myself with: this is a call to check your bias, and speak up when you witness someone expressing racism, prejudice, or bias. Although you may not be providing medical care to an individual, it has been shown that every interaction that is had, effects someone’s health – whether that be physically or mentally. And although one interaction might seem slight, negative interactions build overtime. Checking your bias and acknowledging a racist moment to make a change for future interactions in this world can have a positive impact on the health of African Americans and other minority groups. Racism is a pandemic in the United States that needs a cure. References PBSNewsHour. YouTube, 16 July 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIIEx_SvTj0. Williams, David R. YouTube, TedMed, 2 May 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzyjDR_AWzE&t=472s. “Social Determinants of Health.” Healthy People.gov, Healthy People 2020, www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/social-determinants-of-health. |