If what you said is true then the doctors involved are unethical assholes
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marcos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I remember reading about race bias in pain treatment. It’s something about how doctors trust people from disfavored population less, and tend to give them less effective pain killers… like Advil.
Mickey7@lemmy.world 9 months ago
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 9 months ago
It isn’t a question of ethics. It is an issue with training.
When I went to medical school, we were told to watch out for black patients who were drug-seeking. Really, they should have excluded the race from the topic and focused on drug seekers.
While I was not taught this, it was believed that black people experienced less pain but were more likely to seek opioids. As such, that builds an unconscious bias towards black patients.
It is why I posted an article about unconscious bias and medical training.
It isn’t that pain is racist, it is we have bad stereotypes and myths that have infiltrated our medical system.
Back in school, if I were to prescribe an opioid (And this is back when I could hand them out like candy), nobody would double-check my work on a white patient. If it was a black patient, someone would always come to inspect the patient and often deny my recommendation.
Heart attacks were another bias that infiltrated the medical system.
Now, for Advil, this is just a marketing campaign, and it’s stupid, but as a critique of the medical system, it is valid.
BobaFuttbucker@reddthat.com 9 months ago
Holy shit I agree with you on something. Everything you said here is perfectly correct.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I dislike the term systemic racism because it is overused, but I think it fits this scenario perfectly. Most medical workers are not ‘racist,’ but racist stereotypes have infiltrated the thought process.
Are blacks more likely to seek drugs? It’s hard to say when you assume all black people are drug seeking. I have never seen a study that shows that but that idea is in the system.
I do ponder if that is why white people have such a high mortality rate with opioids. ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/…/AJPH.2021.306431#….
I know the current restrictions are to lower the deaths, but I think they are stupid. I don’t want to hijack the conversation, but the current ideology only pushes people to the black market, where they end up dead.
This is one reason I support a single payer health system. We need to make sure we are not treating people with addictive drugs when we can actually fix their ailment. We also need to stop thinking addiction is a moral failing. Most people will become addicted to opioids if they are on them long enough, and even more so when we have much stronger opioids nowadays.
Alright off my soapbox.
Shadow@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Many people are unethical assholes. Doctors are people. Going to med school does not automatically make you a good person.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You could have just said conservatives instead of unethical assholes.
marcos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
People are more complicated than that.
Shadow@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Yes it’s a significant issue.
www.aamc.org/…/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain