Black Man in a White Coat Part 2 Summary

However, if we are to engage in meaningful dialogue about race and how it impacts medicine, we would be wise to take a page from Dr. Tweedy's book and reflect. If you haven't done so already, please create a new password here. Please subscribe to access our issue content and all of our archives. Subscribe Here. Describing his experiences as student and doctor in a new memoir, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine, Tweedy also learned that he had high blood pressure and had already incurred mild kidney damage—two of the most vexing health problems facing blacks. One of the most fascinating aspects of this memoir is Tweedy's unflinching honesty and fierce introspection.

Though the prose is simple rather than sparkling, I found this book to be a very accessible and essential read. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. With students and physicians alike clad in their white coats (albeit coats of different lengths), the message is clear: In the practice of medicine, we are all equal. Black Man in a White Coat fills an important gap in the conversation about race within medicine.

NPR's Linda Wertheimer speaks to him about how the medical field addresses race. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than whites." In Black Man in a White Coat Dr. Tweedy uses clinical anecdotes and stories from his own experiences as a patient to highlight inequities in healthcare training, access, and delivery. When one of his first professors mistakes him for a maintenance worker, it is a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his early career. Tweedy draws from his experiences and his self-reflections and uses this perspective in order to help others be better caregivers. Though it might have been easier to write a book that focused primarily on the patients he had helped or the interesting cases he had seen, Tweedy instead allows the reader to experience his struggles with the decidedly unflattering, yet honest, process of self-reflection. Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy, New York: Picador, 2015, 304 pages, £12.20. Black Man in a White CoatA Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicineby Damon TweedyPicador.

a doctor's reflections on race and medicine, "One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black AmericansWhen Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Later, Tweedy again acknowledges his own biases about his patients: 'Based on previous patients of similar style and background whom I had encountered, as well as my innate biases, I made several negative assumptions about him…' (240-241). Black men have twice the risk of prostate cancer, and black women are 40 percent more likely than white women to die of breast cancer. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than whites." My reaction troubled me' (99). The White Coat Ceremony is a common rite of passage in American medical schools that is intended to welcome physicians-in-training into the institution of medicine. Tweedy pushes this discussion further, however, by exemplifying intersectionality, the concept that 'race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities' (Collins, 2). The Well-Gardened Mind: A Psychiatrist's View on the Healing Power of Nature.
In Chapter 2, 'Baby Mamas,' Tweedy explores the complex interactions of health disparities though the stories of black mothers Tweedy met as a second-year medical student.

Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. For example, upon encountering and making assumptions about a man on the street, Tweedy writes, 'Was it my medical training that caused me to see him as a list of potential health problems rather than as an individual? Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church, Podcast: Jaimal Yogis, Author and Soulful Surfer, Podcast: Sue Stuart-Smith on the Well-Gardened Mind, Health Expert Patricia Bragg on the Miracle of Fasting, The Gift of Failure: Tips on Transforming Setbacks into Success, Everything Is Spiritual: The New Audiobook by Bestselling Author Rob Bell, How to Mourn the Death of a Loved One in the Times of Social Distancing and COVID-19, The Right Mindset to Conquer and Thrive With Gluten and Other Food Allergies. His goal for Black Man in a White Coat was to 'paint a fuller picture of the experiences of black patients, as well as that of the black doctors who navigate between the black community and the predominately white medical world' (7). Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. … His goal for Black Man in a White Coat was to 'paint a fuller picture of the experiences of black patients, as well as that of the black doctors who navigate between the black community and the predominately white medical world' (7). To accomplish this, we are partnering with various medical schools across the country to produce outstanding short documentary videos which bring awareness to this issue that not only affects the black male population, but also the nation as a whole. In riveting, honest prose, Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. Or was it the many ways in which I'd been indoctrinated by both black and white people, throughout my life, to see poor blacks as inferior and susceptible to so many problems?

Chapters 9 ('Doing the Right Thing') and 10 ('Beyond Race') talk about counseling patients and making good choices as equitably as possible within the American healthcare system. Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-291). Each issue provides inspiration for conscious living, healthy diet and lifestyle, social action, spiritual wisdom and sustainability. In one first-year lecture, his professor initially mistakes him for a janitor. Tweedy writes with admirable honesty about his own racial and social biases and shows how his evolving views inform his work with patients. However, the real value in Tweedy's intimate self-reflections is not necessarily the uncomfortable realizations themselves, though it is refreshing to see them expressed so honestly. Become a subscriber, or find us at your local bookstore, newsstand, or grocer. Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. Black Man in a White Coat reflects qualities that I personally would want in a physician; it is well-researched, engaging, emotionally honest, and introspective. When Damon Tweedy started medical school in 1997, he learned the painful truth about medicine and race: just being black is bad for your health. Equally demoralizing were the negative racial attitudes that Tweedy, who grew up in a segregated working-class community in Maryland, recalls and the slights he experienced firsthand—even from the faculty at the august Duke University School of Medicine. Drawing from other memoirs, history books, public health studies, and various other resources, Tweedy weaves a complex tapestry of information in support of his observations. Tweedy ultimately addresses his readers with an exhortation, based on his experiences: 'A big part of the solution is discarding your assumptions and connecting with each patient as a person' (245). Part III: Perseverance documents Dr. Tweedy's experiences as a practicing psychiatrist. His book adds an important new voice on the shameful disparities that continue to afflict American medicine. Cookie Settings One particular anecdote illustrates this well: In Chapter 6, Tweedy describes an interaction in which he went to an urgent care clinic for his own knee pain, and the physician who saw him did not examine his knee until Tweedy revealed that he, too, was a physician. © BMJ Publishing Group Limited 2020. Describing his experiences as student and doctor in a new memoir, Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine, Tweedy also learned that he had high blood pressure and had already incurred mild kidney damage—two of the most vexing health problems facing blacks.

But Tweedy's compelling read also highlights more hopeful moments. It is notable that Tweedy keeps as levelheaded as one can in retelling very emotionally-charged experiences in this section, perhaps so as to not appear insecure about race (63) or to not disrupt the status quo (147). Black Man in a White Coat is a commentary on challenges and lessons [Dr. Tweedy has] encountered as a physician of color, offering first-hand truths about the medical issues and racial divides in health care plaguing our community." ―Ebony

Because it is especially relevant to my identity as a medical student, my colleagues and I have posited one way for teaching racial justice in medical school curricula through narrative medicine. Painful metaphors: enactivism and art in qualitative research, Bibliotherapy in practice: a person-centred approach to using books for mental health and dementia in the community, Representing young mens experience of anorexia nervosa: a French-language case study, Saudades de ser nihonjin: Japanese-Brazilian identity and mental health in literature and media, The illness-disease dichotomy and the biological-clinical splitting of medicine, Analysis and discussion of research | Updates on the latest issues | Open debate, All BMJ blog posts are published under a CC-BY-NC licence. See similar material that would be shelved with this item, across all Hopkins libraries. Damon Tweedy, the unknown black man, dressed like he was about to mow the lawn, couldn't get the doctor to look him in the eye or touch him; Damon Tweedy, M.D.

Black Man in a White Coat Part 2 Summary

Source: https://homefarmfoods.co/.tmb/journal/12q1dnb.php?567437=black-man-in-a-white-coat-summary

Share this post