"Medical education demands more than a mastery of diagnosis and treatment. Like other medical students with whom I’ve trained, Patrick Thompson learned early about the intense pressures to fit a certain mold. As institutions throw more effort and attention towards improving diversity, parallel efforts towards ensuring inclusion are trailing behind. The gulf between the two creates a work environment that is often unkind, undermining the very diversity of professional staffing that hospitals need and purport to value...
Schools record and celebrate the numerical advances as they tick up. Aspiring physicians respond by writing essays on the unique perspectives that qualify them to be members of a diverse, 21st century medical school class. Slowly, the gates of entry into medical school are wedged open to shepherd in varied experiences and identities. Improvement seems like it’s on the horizon.
But I’ve seen how these students, many among my friends, aren’t getting what they bargained for. This admission comes with a cost.
Once they are in school, they are told to leave precisely what they bring to the table at the threshold of the hospital. Women are taught to emulate men (but not too much) and leave gender politics out of the operating room. Some are asked to scrub their tongues clean of accents or Ebonics while queer and transgender students are trained to quiet their identities. Trainees struggling with chronic illnesses or disability learn early on not to associate too closely with their diagnoses, and black and brown students feel pressure to suffer explicit racial insults in silence."
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