Kim Porter And Why Some Doctors Don’t Believe Black Women

The death of model, actress and mother Kim Porter, hit the world hard. She was a beautiful Black woman who seemed healthy, had no previous signs of health issues, but then died at the young age of 47. Now, there are stories going around that say she had issues, had a doctor, but the doctor did not listen to her. This is eerily familiar to the true story of Serena Williams during labor. Serena had to literally ‘save her own life’ because her doctor didn’t believe the level or seriousness of pain she was going through.

Given this environment where the person who is supposed to help you–your doctor–is not listening to you, many black women have found their own ways to advocate for their health. From making a full-on production about their pain to asking a thousand questions a thousand different ways, something has to be done.

Black women’s bodies have been abused by the medical profession for hundreds of years. J. Marion Sims is considered the “father of modern gynecology.” Sims was a surgeon from Alabama who performed a series of experimental procedures on enslaved Black women in the mid-1800s. None of these women were consenting to these procedures and were often operated on without the use of anesthesia, or numbing agents. The inhuman treatment of these women perpetuated the belief that because of the color of our skin, Black women and Black people are biologically more adverse to pain than white people. This myth has stuck with us for generations.

Fast forward to the 20th century, African Americans are now routinely under-treated for their pain compared with whites, according to research. A study released in 2016 shed some disturbing light on why that might be the case.

Researchers at the University of Virginia quizzed white medical students and residents to see how many believed inaccurate and at times “fantastical” differences about the two races — for example, that blacks have less sensitive nerve endings than whites or that black people’s blood coagulates more quickly. They found that fully half thought at least one of the false statements presented was possibly, probably or definitely true.

Moreover, those who held false beliefs often rated black patients’ pain as lower than that of white patients and made less appropriate recommendations about how they should be treated.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows one of the most frustrating and downright deadly problems in pain treatment today: That whites are more likely than blacks to be prescribed strong pain medications for equivalent ailments.

The study concluded that, “A substantial number of white laypeople and medical students and residents hold false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites, and demonstrates that these beliefs predict racial bias in pain perception and treatment recommendation accuracy.”

The death of model, actress and mother Kim Porter, hit the world hard. She was a beautiful Black woman who seemed healthy, had no previous signs of health issues, but then died at the young age of 47. Now, there are stories going around that say she had issues, had a doctor, but the doctor did not listen to her. This is eerily familiar to the true story of Serena Williams during labor. Serena had to literally ‘save her own life’ because her doctor didn’t believe the level or seriousness of pain she was going through.

Given this environment where the person who is supposed to help you–your doctor–is not listening to you, many black women have found their own ways to advocate for their health. From making a full-on production about their pain to asking a thousand questions a thousand different ways, something has to be done.

Black women’s bodies have been abused by the medical profession for hundreds of years. J. Marion Sims is considered the “father of modern gynecology.” Sims was a surgeon from Alabama who performed a series of experimental procedures on enslaved Black women in the mid-1800s. None of these women were consenting to these procedures and were often operated on without the use of anesthesia, or numbing agents. The inhuman treatment of these women perpetuated the belief that because of the color of our skin, Black women and Black people are biologically more adverse to pain than white people. This myth has stuck with us for generations.

Fast forward to the 20th century, African Americans are now routinely under-treated for their pain compared with whites, according to research. A study released in 2016 shed some disturbing light on why that might be the case.

Researchers at the University of Virginia quizzed white medical students and residents to see how many believed inaccurate and at times “fantastical” differences about the two races — for example, that blacks have less sensitive nerve endings than whites or that black people’s blood coagulates more quickly. They found that fully half thought at least one of the false statements presented was possibly, probably or definitely true.

Moreover, those who held false beliefs often rated black patients’ pain as lower than that of white patients and made less appropriate recommendations about how they should be treated.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows one of the most frustrating and downright deadly problems in pain treatment today: That whites are more likely than blacks to be prescribed strong pain medications for equivalent ailments.

The study concluded that, “A substantial number of white laypeople and medical students and residents hold false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites, and demonstrates that these beliefs predict racial bias in pain perception and treatment recommendation accuracy.”