Week 12: Teaching Medicine

 In medicine, where and who a person gets their information by is very important. This is especially true with medical students. However, teachers of medicine are often victims of bias as well. In 2018 only 3.6 percent of medical teachers were black, with white being the majority at 63.9 percent and other groups making up the rest according to AMMC. This sort of numbers can result in both a biased education system, as well as a workplace for teachers. Uche Blackstock wrote an article about the experiences she had a black medical teacher, and she reported a workplace that had a lack of mentors or support system as there were no other black teachers working with her. This is where affinity bias is present, as people only want to work with people like them. However, this can cause an even bigger gap with medicine to come. Many black medical teachers find this kind of workplace exhausting, and many are leaving or considering leaving the profession. This will create a more biased education system, repeating the system similar to that of America during segregation. And currently only 6.6 percent of physicians are black, leaving even less role models for potential medical staff. Only 8 percent of medical school applicants were black in 2020 according to WFYI public media. A lack of black teachers in medical and before college education strongly contributes to this, and seeing the frustrating state in where even black teachers face massive discrimination is discouraging. Many black students report having other black students and teachers to mentor them helps massively, but currently there are not the numbers to gain more black doctors and medical teachers. The more we see black doctors, the easier it will be for students of color to apply for medical school. 

Sources:

Why black doctors like me are leaving academic medicine - STAT (statnews.com)

Figure 15. Percentage of full-time U.S. medical school faculty by race/ethnicity, 2018 | AAMC

Black Medical Students Navigate Systemic Racism To Fulfill A Mission | Side Effects | Health and Medical News (sideeffectspublicmedia.org)