Educational resources around being anti-racist for healthcare students
Disclaimer: I am a white woman so I do not claim to be an expert but these resources are just some of the ways I have tried to improve my knowledge of how healthcare differs in its understanding of medical presentations and treatments of black people. I try my best to be anti-racist and I feel as a modern healthcare student it is my responsibility to ensure my knowledge and ability to treat people is not centred on one ethnicity. I hope you find some of these resources useful or interesting and you can do some further learning in this substantially important field of medical education.
Mind the Gap by Malone Mukwende
This is a fantastic freely available resource that aims to offer information that isn’t normally included in the “colonised” version of medicine that many are taught in the UK. The book is utterly fantastic and has been a pivotal resource in my personal re-education of illness presentations on black and brown skin tones. The book covers various presentations from Erythema (red appearance of skin due to inflammation and infection) to Meningococcal disease (meningitis). The book also describes why it is so important for this information to be shared, as without the “decolonisation” of the UK’s medical curriculum, and for students to be taught “to recognise signs and symptoms on darker skin tones, there will be delays in diagnosis or misdiagnosis”.
https://www.blackandbrownskin.co.uk/mindthegap
Why the Color of Your Skin Can Affect the Quality of Your Diagnosis By Helene M. Epstein
This is a brilliant article that clearly describes the problems and racial bias that lead to a lower quality of care for black and other minority ethnicity patients. The article includes a quote from a doctor who specialises in patient safety and health equity, who says that we have “skirted the issue, Clinical decisions made by those with racial bias lead to harm and preventable death”. The biased and unfair ways healthcare has been set up to explicitly harm people of colour is complex and that is why it is so important for students to question what they are being taught and to supplement their learning if they are being taught an implicitly biased curriculum. Furthermore, the five complex factors that the article says impact diagnosis for patients of colour are:
Explicit racial bias
Implicit racial bias
Missing data
Lack of trust
Reduced access
Birthrights charity
Birthrights is a charity in the UK that advocate for “ensuring women and birthing people receive the respect and dignity they deserve in pregnancy and childbirth”. Particularly their work on racial injustice in maternity care is incredibly important to educate ourselves on as “evidence repeatedly shows that Black, Asian, and mixed ethnicity women and birthing people are more likely to die, experience baby loss, become seriously unwell and have worse experiences of care during pregnancy and childbirth, compared to those who are white”. This statement is horrifying and realistically should be discussed in nursing students classes and on placements, but it isn’t. That is why I feel the need to highlight the very little that I have been learning about to others to ensure that as nursing students, we can work to change this. The co-chair of the inquiry, Sandra Igwe, set up a brilliant project called The Mother Group, that works to support black motherhood experience. The organisation has supported over 3500 mums in their workshops and have run over 100 events. The topic is also discussed on the BBC podcast ‘The Fourcast’ - “How can we make birth safer for Black women” by the inquiry’s Sandra Igwe (Content Warning: this podcast discusses maternal death and stillbirth).
Insta: @themotherhoodgroup
https://www.themotherhoodgroup.com/ https://www.birthrights.org.uk/campaigns-research/racial-injustice/ https://thefourcast.libsyn.com/how-can-we-make-birth-safer-for-black-women
Nurses and our role in ending racism
In an article written by Ryne Wilson, an RN in America, for the Oncology Nursing Society, the topic of nurses' role in dismantling racism. Ryne acknowledges he knew of racism in America but after the murder of George Floyd, he began the realisation that racism was so engrossed even in the profession he worked in. Succinctly, he describes how we as practitioners and students can work on dismantling bias within ourselves. He suggests:
Acknowledge the racist history of your country
Educate yourself
“Leverage a trust in advocacy”
Accept that you will make mistakes
