Why Don't Doctors Believe Black Women?

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

By Danielle Touba

Her name was Tashonna Ward. She was just one of the countless Black women who have died at the hands of medical professionals. 

Ward was suffering from shortness of breath and went to the emergency room at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before 5 p.m. on January 2. After informing the hospital of her symptoms, she was asked to wait. After waiting for over two hours at Froedtert, Ward decided to leave and seek care elsewhere.

Tashonna collapsed on the way to her car and was pronounced dead at 11 p.m. The tragedy of her death has us wondering: why don’t medical professionals believe Black women?

One 2017 research study published in “Academic Emergency Medicine” found that medical professionals, especially white physicians, believed the symptoms of white patients over the symptoms of Black patients. 

To further emphasize the reality of this issue, a 2014 survey conducted by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found that when medical participants were met with vignettes of patients suffering from severe osteoarthritis, despite identical cases between Black and white patients, white patients were deemed more medically cooperative than Black patients. Essentially, medical participants believed white patients were easier to work with. 

Black women are all too familiar with their symptoms being overlooked.

“It’s a trust thing,” said Ashley Green, a freshman advertising major who recalled her family telling her to always seek multiple medical opinions. “With everything in life, bias exists.”

Implicit bias is a phenomenon that plagues us all. It refers to the attitudes and stereotypes that unconsciously exist within us and often affects the way we treat people. The reality is, in the Black community, implicit bias is well known. 

Many Black parents teach their children how to go about situations such as these. The Tuskegee Experiment, a clinical “study” conducted from 1932-1972 which injected Black men with syphilis unknowingly, is just one example of some of the ways the medical community has taken advantage of and ultimately killed Black people. It’s no wonder many members of the Black community have a distrust of doctors.

Even with high socioeconomic statuses, Black women still have problems being heard by doctors. Professional tennis player Serena Williams recalls telling doctors to investigate her shortness of breath after giving birth to her daughter in 2018. 

“Doctors just aren’t listening to us,” Serena told BBC in 2018. “I had a wonderful, wonderful doctor. Unfortunately, a lot of African-Americans and Black people don’t have the same experience that I’ve had.”

It is evident that a bias exists against Black women. Not only do Black women see this in their own experiences, but it has been confirmed by research. We can’t ignore this striking problem that quite literally is the difference between life and death for Black women. In 2020, there are steps we can proactively take to move closer toward progress in this area.

Doctors need to recognize their own internal biases. Medical professionals are now being encouraged to self evaluate by using the Harvard Implicit Association Test, which measures immediate responses individuals have to different groups in society. The test targets biases on race, religion, and ethnicity.

“The Implicit Association Tests are humbling,” said Dr. Molly Carnes, internal medicine doctor and director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Dr. Carnes has organized programs at the university to educate those in the medical community on bias. As a society, we too should implement the Implicit Association Test within our own lives as a form of self-evaluation. This way, we can spend time working on diminishing our own biases. 

The medical community needs to listen to Black women. Whether it’s implementing feedback forms for patients to express their experiences with medical professionals or simply allowing Black women to openly speak about their symptoms, the Black female voice deserves to be heard, not dismissed. 

We all have a role to play, both in the classroom or in social settings. Let’s make the conscious effort to listen to Black women and take their experiences seriously.