Dismissed
Tackling the Biases That Undermine our Health Care
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Facts—women in pain are much more likely than men to receive prescriptions for sedatives rather than pain medication; Black women are more than three times more likely than white women to die of childbirth-related causes. Whether it’s age, body size, sexual orientation, or other cultural factors, bias in healthcare is an uncomfortable truth. In this first-ever book on the subject written from the author’s unique perspective of being a doctor, a woman, and Black, Dr. Angela Marshall, a contributing health expert on CNN, Fox5 News and Let’s Talk Lives, and repeatedly named a “Top Doctor” by Washingtonian magazine, candidly addresses the life-and-death issue, sharing personal and patient stories and fresh, pragmatic solutions.
Have you ever felt you were treated differently by a medical professional due to your skin color, age, ethnicity, gender, or for any other reason? If so, you are far from alone.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, body size, and other cultural factors have a significant bearing on whether you will be diagnosed and treated correctly.
Health-care providers and their patients are human, and all humans have unconscious biases that affect how we listen, observe, and act. Bias impacts patients when they are at their most vulnerable. Health-care bias can mean the difference not just between suffering and relief, but between life and death.
For the first time, an author with the unique perspective of being one of America’s top doctors, a woman, and Black, candidly addresses the issue of bias in health care, sharing personal and patient stories and pragmatic solutions. Dr. Angela Marshall, repeatedly named a “Top Doctor” by Washingtonian magazine, draws on extensive research, poignant stories from some of the thousands of patients she has treated, and her own compelling personal experience, to examine the bias from both patients’ and health‑care providers’ points of view. She offers a bold blueprint for change, filled with fresh solutions that can help everyone in our health-care system.
Dismissed not only explains what so many people feel so profoundly—that the system is working against them. It also reveals what health-care practitioners, patients, and society in general can do to make it right.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This uneven debut by physician Marshall explores discrimination in the American health care system. Marshall draws on social science research and stories from her practice to survey how race, gender, sexual orientation, weight, and age affect the medical care patients receive. Examining the impact of racism, she tells the story of a white cardiologist who dismissed the suffering of a Black woman referred by Marshall and discusses a 2019 study that found white participants "more readily recognized pain on White faces than on Black faces." The author explores how ableism and ageism affect care, noting that a third of adults with a disability "have unmet health-care needs because of cost and transportation challenges," and that older individuals are often infantilized by doctors who "assume senior patients are mentally impaired." The anecdotes drive home the everyday failures of the medical system. However, though Marshall purports to write "for both health-care practitioners and patients," she addresses her advice largely to the former (she recommends adding cultural competency training and a required geriatrics rotation to medical school curricula), offering little for patients on how to find better doctors and advocate for themselves. Though this struggles to balance its numerous objectives, it makes for a competent survey of how the American medical system lets down vulnerable communities.
