Seeing Patients
Unconscious Bias in Health Care
Augustus A. White III, David Chanoff, David Chanoff
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Seeing Patients
Unconscious Bias in Health Care
Augustus A. White III, David Chanoff, David Chanoff
About This Book
If you're going to have a heart attack, an organ transplant, or a joint replacement, here's the key to getting the very best medical care: be a white, straight, middle-class male. This book by a pioneering black surgeon takes on one of the few critically important topics that haven't figured in the heated debate over health care reformâthe largely hidden yet massive injustice of bias in medical treatment.Growing up in Jim Crowâera Tennessee and training and teaching in overwhelmingly white medical institutions, Gus White witnessed firsthand how prejudice works in the world of medicine. And while race relations have changed dramatically, old ways of thinking die hard. In Seeing Patients White draws upon his experience in startlingly different worlds to make sense of the unconscious bias that riddles medical treatment, and to explore what it means for health care in a diverse twenty-first-century America.White and coauthor David Chanoff use extensive research and interviews with leading physicians to show how subconscious stereotyping influences doctorâpatient interactions, diagnosis, and treatment. Their book brings together insights from the worlds of social psychology, neuroscience, and clinical practice to define the issues clearly and, most importantly, to outline a concrete approach to fixing this fundamental inequity in the delivery of health care.