A family doctor who helped create an anti-black racism course for medical professionals says she hopes participants will “unlearn” long-standing discriminatory practices that lead to unequal care for vulnerable groups. talk. Dr.
A family doctor who helped create an anti-black racism course for medical professionals says she hopes participants will “unlearn” long-standing discriminatory practices that lead to unequal care for vulnerable groups. talk.
Dr. Onye Norom, co-founder of Black Health Education, based at the University of Toronto and Dalhousie University in Halifax, said the online course launching Thursday will explore how everyday systemic bias impacts people's health. He said he would address the gap in medical education by investigating how to provide medical education. Diverse community.
“Most of the time, it's not the doctor who's actually directly saying the racist thing or saying the slur or anything like that. It's just a subtle lack of empathy, and maybe a lack of resources. “We don't try to provide that, or sometimes we make assumptions about people and their level of education,” said Norom, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Temerty School of Medicine.
Norom (pronounced “no-rum”) said families are often “extremely wary” of the neglect and discrimination their loved ones may face while in the hospital.
“One of the difficult things about racism in healthcare is that the way you and your family are treated is so nuanced that you can't necessarily be sure whether it's due to racism or not.”
Norom said that when her father underwent surgery for a hemorrhagic stroke related to dementia in 2015, she spent much of her time at his father's bedside because she wanted to protect him from harm if necessary.
This six-hour self-paced online course was co-developed with partial funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This includes his eight modules covering topics such as criminal justice, child welfare, and the legacy of slavery.
Volunteer courses available on the partner organization's website cost between $275 and $350, depending on enrollment, and include a certificate.
Norom said the collaborative is currently working with the Medical Council of Canada to include questions about Black health in future exams. All medical students must pass an exam before working as a doctor.
“Students will have to learn about Black health for the first time,” he said of the plan, adding that anti-Black racism is not included in all medical school curricula.
It is also a resource for medical schools that set their own curricula to address racism against other groups and are used as part of continuing education components for administrators, nurses, physicians, and public health officials. She said it could be.
Harmful anti-Black misconceptions and social structures can impact health in the form of high blood pressure and early chronic disease, she said.
“It's the stress we put on us that affects our health, not our faulty genes. We know that high blood pressure is higher in Black, Indigenous and South Asian people. Are you saying we all have high blood pressure?” Is it the same mutation? Or are we experiencing a similar situation? If that is the situation. It's an injustice and we can do something about it,” she said.
“I want healthcare workers to understand that we are in situations like this every day, and when we go to the hospital, it gets even worse. It puts you in a racist situation.”
A Public Health Agency of Canada report released four years ago found that the legacy of European colonization in Africa and slavery, which was legal in Canada until 1834, led to discrimination against Black communities in the country's system. He said that it is deeply ingrained in policy and practice.
In Canada, race-based data is not collected to show the preponderance of different conditions in certain groups, which may be due to social determinants of health.
A study published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association in 2016 found that between 2004 and 2006, nearly 9 per cent of babies born to black women were born prematurely, compared to nearly 6 per cent of babies born to white women. Ta.
Norom said this type of data could help doctors better monitor the health of pregnant Black women, who are at higher risk of unemployment and housing inequality.
Omisore Dryden, a black studies expert at Dalhousie University School of Medicine who contributed to the course, said she had seen several specialists for pain several years ago, but sickle cell disease is more common among black people. Because of this, some people speculated that she had sickle cell disease.
However, she was eventually diagnosed with Crohn's disease.
“Because I wasn't white or Jewish, there was this idea that it couldn't be Crohn's disease and that it had to be something else. Here's the overreliance on racial biology, the idea that it couldn't be Crohn's disease. We're seeing the idea that it's Crohn's disease, or that certain people have certain types of diseases.”
Dryden, who has lived in cities such as Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax, said she has heard of negative experiences other Black people have faced within the health care system.
“I think we can all think of different experiences with delayed diagnosis, inadequate levels of pain management, and refusal of treatment.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 21, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage is supported through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
Camille Baines, Canadian Press
