Black and Hispanic patients in U.S. emergency rooms are less likely to receive medication to ease acute pain than their white counterparts. That is, unfortunately, a fact.
There has been a study that found when a Black person enters an emergency room with a pain like a broken bone and then a white person enters an emergency room with the same ailment, the Black person will receive a lesser dosage and even sometimes an inferior treatment. But it’s the exact same injury. Not a disease or condition, but injury-related pain.
As a matter of fact, a study found that when patients had long bone fractures or acute pain from other types of traumatic injuries, Black people were 41% less likely to get pain medication than white people.
Why is that?
A study published in 2016 sheds light on why this is continuing: Racial disparities are being taught.
In a survey of 222 of tomorrow’s doctors–white medical students and residents–about half endorsed false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites.
And those who did also perceived blacks as feeling less pain than whites, and were more likely to suggest inappropriate medical treatment for black patients, according to the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Read that again, future doctors “were more likely to suggest inappropriate medical treatment for Black patients.” That’s wild.
The overall survey included 100 regular everyday people and over 400 medical students and residents of different racial groups, asking them what they thought about statements like “Black people’s nerve endings are less sensitive than white people’s nerve endings” (which the authors say is false) and “Whites are less likely to have a stroke than blacks” (which the authors say is true).
They also asked participants to imagine how much pain white or black individuals would experience in situations like getting their hand slammed in a car door.
Researchers also asked medical students to suggest treatment for the patients. Then they looked at the relationship between those three categories.
There were several false beliefs across the board. But for white respondents specifically, those false beliefs correlated with their belief that blacks feel less pain, on average.
What’s even more disturbing is those medical students and residents with a higher than average level of false beliefs gave less accurate advice more percentage of the time.
In another study, researchers examined data from 14 previously published studies of pain management in American emergency rooms (ERs) that altogether included 7,070 white patients, 1,538 Hispanic patients, and 3,125 black patients.
Compared to white patients, black patients were 40% less likely to receive medication to ease acute pain and Hispanic patients were 25% less likely, the analysis found.
“The reasons for these disparities are
likely complex and multifold and may include factors such as implicit bias, language barriers, and cultural differences in the perception and expression of pain and institutional differences in ERs that serve mostly Black and Hispanic patients,”
said Dr. Andrew Meltzer, senior author of the study and a researcher at George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences in Washington, D.C.
“Unrelieved pain can lead to a wide range of consequences such as growing distrust towards physicians and the medical community, economic burden from its debilitative effects, and physical and emotional repercussions,”
Meltzer said by email. “Given the current opioid epidemic, however, it remains unclear if more pain medicine should be a marker of higher quality care.”
Black patients were 34% less likely to receive opioids for acute pain than white patients, and Hispanic patients were 13% less likely to get opioids for acute pain, researchers report in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine.
So what do we do?
It’s your right to find out what others may suggest in your situation.
It’s okay to ask your doctor if he or she knows about racial bias when it comes to pain. It’s alright to ask your doctor if they know of the cultural differences in treating African American patients.
If they ask you if it’s painful, don’t try to be “tough” or “tough it out.” Be honest and say how much pain you are in so that you can get the treatment you need.
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