Equitable, quality pain treatment for Black people

Dr. BCW, Dr. Curry-Winchell, discusses how we can work on ensuring equitable, quality treatment of pain in Black and marginalized people and reviews her recent TEDx talk which discusses historical distrust of the healthcare system with black and other minority groups.

read the full Nevada Independent article here

Article Snippet:

In my recent TEDx Talk titled, Why Black Patients Don’t Trust the Healthcare System , I explored racially-based medical algorithms and their impact on health outcomes for Black patients. As a physician, I believe such algorithms have no place in the modern healthcare system, as they can affect how Black patients are diagnosed, as well as the morbidity and mortality rates in the community.

A study published as recently as 2016 by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science showed that 40 percent of first- and second-year medical students endorsed the false belief that “black people’s skin is thicker than white people’s,” and that trainees who believed Black people are not as sensitive to pain as white people were less likely to treat Black people’s pain appropriately. Another troubling report found that Black children diagnosed with appendicitis (which is extremely painful), were less likely to get pain medication in the emergency room than white children.

There is also the issue of the misguided notion that if someone is in pain, they must “present” (look and sound) a certain way. For Black patients, especially, if you don’t look tired or pained, or display a discernibly dismayed facial expression, a practitioner may assume you are not in pain. Yet pain cannot be placed in a lane in this way. There are various components that make up the experience of, and reaction to, pain — and unfortunately for people of color that’s not….

See what else Dr. BCW has to say in the full Nevada Independent article linked above.