Black patients’ reported pain is dismissed and undertreated by white physicians

Evidence

On November 29, Moore tested positive for Covid-19, and soon after, she was checked in to Indiana University Health North Hospital in Carmel, a suburban city near Indianapolis. On December 4, she posted a video on her Facebook page that showed her lying in her hospital bed, a breathing tube inserted in her nose. Her voice halting as she struggled to catch her breath, Moore detailed disrespectful treatment by a white physician, whose name she took the time to spell out. He had rejected her plea for additional doses of an antiviral medication used to treat Covid, she said, adding in the post accompanying the video, “He did not even listen to my lungs, he didn’t touch me in any way.” And despite what she described as excruciating neck pain, according to her account, he told her he was uncomfortable giving her additional pain medication and tried to send her home. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 955

Categorization

• XREF: Instantiation of the well-documented finding that Black patients are systematically undertreated for pain — connects to the reframing argument that slave-era medicine normalized Black bodies as less sensitive to pain. — connects to: Unconscious racial bias measurably degrades medical treatment for black patients. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1247