I realize I've taken a pretty big absence in writing, I was studying for my board licensing exams (I passed y'all, yay!!), but I think this topic is something that not only deserves to be talked about, but actually sickens me that I have to talk about it. I'm a minority myself, and as you guys know in medical school. I can't UNDERSTAND what black people in this country are going through, nobody can if you aren't black, but we can SYMPATHIZE. It's just purely a factual thing that there are systemic examples of racism leading to absolute senseless violence and discrimination against people of color in this country. That's not just law enforcement guys, that's us too, as physicians in hospitals. It's been very well proven and stated in research (scroll through all of it here: National Institute of Health - Health Disparities), that there are treatment disparities between various groups, and sure some of that does boil down to biological things we can't change that leaves certain populations at higher risks for different diseases, don't get me wrong, I understand that point to. My point is EVERYONE needs to do better.

As physicians, we take the Hippocratic Oath, (copy of that here: The Hippocratic Oath Today), though it doesn't consider a variety of factors, the underlying point of it remains. We as physicians are to care for our patients, if we're truly altruistic we want to make sure that these patients are treated as fairly, and with as much justice as possible. We can't become physicians and respect our traditions of healing, caring, and being altruistic by practicing discrimination. I think the same applies to everybody in healthcare, we shouldn't care what ethnic, socioeconomic, etc. background a patient comes from, just focus on giving them the best care we can possible give. That's what we signed up for, that's why we do this.

I know this is a topic that has had a lot of discussion throughout every single piece of news outlet and social media the past few days, and I understand that sometimes we just need to get away from all of the things that are going on in the world. It's why we have our hobbies and our passions to get away from that, and if you're on Publish0x to get away from it, and have to read this, I do apologize for that. However, I don't think anybody in health care should be silent about these problems that have been facing our country, it's been going on much too long, and we need to work to improve and do better. How to implement these changes, I'm not sure, I need to sit here and game plan that out too. Because things haven't worked in the past, and so we need to do our research, and try to make educated, analytical decisions on how to implement change. I believe we should leave this earth in a better place than how we found it, and continue to push the needle forward. It's one thing to say things, but it's one thing to do them. I've donated to various funds, and if this is something that moves you, do more than nothing, be the change. If you're a physician, lawyer, politician, teacher, etc. it. doesn't. matter. Help push the needle forward.