Elizabeth Warren says doctors, nurses don't treat black women same way as other women

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Is it bash medical professions month and I just didn't realize it?

Don't get me wrong I do believe that prejudice exists but according to Ms. Warren, the only concievable reason for the increased materials deaths in African American women is due to doctors and nurses being prejudice. This is absolutely ludicrous.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-doctors-nurses-black-women.amp

Specializes in Psych.

Why are you feeling so personally attacked? I just really baffled by your responses. Everyone has unconscious bias and prejudice, regardless of race. Social psych 101, it is ingrained in humans as a safety mechanism. Haven't you ever had to take or heard of the racial bias test that associates good or bad words with race and you're supposed to go fast with your first thought? There is substantial evidence that backs up the disparities in many different races, gender, socioeconomic classes, sexuality, religion, culture. Denying that it exists is part of the problem. There's obviously a lot to learn and figure out as solutions to these problems. Lack of funding and systematic/institutionalized racism is difficult to overcome. If you don't like her that's fine but worrying about Warren's semantics singling nurses out seems odd, in my opinion.

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Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.
20 hours ago, LLLovely said:

I’m sorry this has happened to anyone. Did you know that even physicians are treated poorly in maternal child settings when they are women who say they feel something is wrong? Stuff happens. However, we aren’t really talking about either of those things. Your anecdotal experience does not negate the fact that this happens at an alarmingly higher rate to blacks (not POC in general) and an even higher rate to black women.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be pissed about what happened to you, but your experience doesn’t speak to the bigger picture here.

I highly recommend a great book called "In Shock" by Rana Awdish, a minority critical care physician who experienced a severe complication during her pregnancy and they would not listen to her, assuming they knew better, and it led to a cascade of terrible effects. This was at her own hospital, to make it worse. ?

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Elizabeth Warren is desperate. If she needs to attack people, she gets those who are serving the public. She has no idea how many professionals get maltreated by patients.

Nobody deserves to be maltreated.

My internal bias tells me that not to pay attention to patients who are *** stirrers and are stealing other patients' time away from them. There is a reason why social services are available. I'll come back when they're less angry.

Documents their complains then everything is fine.

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Specializes in Critical Care.
2 hours ago, jd81pn said:

Elizabeth Warren is desperate. If she needs to attack people, she gets those who are serving the public. She has no idea how many professionals get maltreated by patients.

Nobody deserves to be maltreated.

My internal bias tells me that not to pay attention to patients who are *** stirrers and are stealing other patients' time away from them. There is a reason why social services are available. I'll come back when they're less angry.

Documents their complains then everything is fine.

Who is the "they" you're referring to?

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From a new article in the Associated Press:

Quote

Black women in the U.S. are about three times as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause as others, partly because of racial bias they may experience in getting care and doctors not recognizing risk factors such as high blood pressure, said Dr. Lisa Hollier, the obstetrician group’s president [President of ACOG - FSZ Student Nurse].

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The vitriol and disbelief expressed in this post is just .....shocking, but at the same time not shocking. It also shows how people just don't understand implicit versus explicit bias. It also shows how far we still have to go as a country.

Warren never said ALL nurses and physicians. The data backs up her statement. I like many others that have posted have witnessed this bias at hand. I've seen doctors go in a white patients room and spend 20-30 minutes chatting with the patient, building rapport, laughing and joking; and go in the next "non white" patient room and change their entire demeanor and rush out of the room as quickly as they can. They aren't even aware that they are treating the patients differently because its just implicit.

I've had a patient break down in tears because a doctor accused her of being drug seeking because she wanted pain meds for severe abdominal pain. Then she refused to take any medicine I offered her after that because she'd already been accused of something and didn't want to feed into it. So she suffered and cried. This was a black woman. I encouraged her to report the behavior but she was afraid there would be retaliation and her care would suffer further if she reported the incident.

WE all have biases. But when we acknowledge that we have biases, we can try to correct for them. But when we are in denial about biases we continue to perpetuate these harms.

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Specializes in CRNA, Finally retired.

mn3000: Absolutely not in disagreement with the above, but what stymies me is HOW we get people to realize their biases. Maybe someone here has some expertise on that. I know that bigots can be changed but how do we change the entire helping professions? Perhaps there is someone on this forum that has attended or facilitated such training in a group. I'm just (really) curious how we can get folks to evolve who aren't aware of their biases. But I know there are rehabbed neo-nazis who have renounced their pasts....just don't know how to guide others to get in the same place, especially people who are so-called educated and should have had their assumptions challenged in college.

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Just another reason added to a long list of reasons why I can't stand that woman. Elizabeth warren please go away and take your race baiting with you.

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On ‎5‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 7:44 AM, mn3000 said:

The vitriol and disbelief expressed in this post is just .....shocking, but at the same time not shocking. It also shows how people just don't understand implicit versus explicit bias. It also shows how far we still have to go as a country.

Warren never said ALL nurses and physicians. The data backs up her statement. I like many others that have posted have witnessed this bias at hand. I've seen doctors go in a white patients room and spend 20-30 minutes chatting with the patient, building rapport, laughing and joking; and go in the next "non white" patient room and change their entire demeanor and rush out of the room as quickly as they can. They aren't even aware that they are treating the patients differently because its just implicit.

I've had a patient break down in tears because a doctor accused her of being drug seeking because she wanted pain meds for severe abdominal pain. Then she refused to take any medicine I offered her after that because she'd already been accused of something and didn't want to feed into it. So she suffered and cried. This was a black woman. I encouraged her to report the behavior but she was afraid there would be retaliation and her care would suffer further if she reported the incident.

WE all have biases. But when we acknowledge that we have biases, we can try to correct for them. But when we are in denial about biases we continue to perpetuate these harms.

I've heard from white patients as well saying how the md's don't spend enough time with them. You can't say this is a wide spread problem that's only happening to black people. Its across the board, imo.

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Specializes in OB.
27 minutes ago, Dy-no-mite Nurse1 said:

I've heard from white patients as well saying how the md's don't spend enough time with them. You can't say this is a wide spread problem that's only happening to black people. Its across the board, imo.

Actually we can say that. This isn't just about 'MDs not spending enough time with them.' The literature backs up the claims that people of color have worse outcomes because of systemic micro-racism.

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1 hour ago, Dy-no-mite Nurse1 said:

Just another reason added to a long list of reasons why I can't stand that woman. Elizabeth warren please go away and take your race baiting with you.

We the people..

Not, we the white, we the black, we the asian, we the hispanic,

We the people..

Now, cite history for reasons why this nation is racist. I am a ethnic "minority (if such things exist in this nation)," that became an American through the philosophy of thought which is upheld by our laws, and not by heritage or lineage.

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Specializes in CCRN.
On 5/2/2019 at 10:38 AM, jd81pn said:

Elizabeth Warren is desperate. If she needs to attack people, she gets those who are serving the public. She has no idea how many professionals get maltreated by patients.

Nobody deserves to be maltreated.

My internal bias tells me that not to pay attention to patients who are *** stirrers and are stealing other patients' time away from them. There is a reason why social services are available. I'll come back when they're less angry.

Documents their complains then everything is fine.

Hopefully your internal biases won't bring you to court one of these days and loose your license...

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