PHYSICIAN WORKING FOR AN ANTIRACIST EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT
During her residency at Brown University ’ s Warren Alpert Medical School , Dr . Taneisha Wilson realized she was just one of two Black women in the program . So she began working to recruit more residents of color while also trying to “ ensure the environment was going to be supportive of their lived experience ,” she says .
But there was room for improvement in all areas of the ED , so Wilson — alongside pediatric emergency fellow Hannah Barber-Doucet and other colleagues — developed the innovative Discussing Anti-
Racism and Equity in Emergency Medicine ( DARE-EM ) curriculum for health care providers , which emphasizes an antiracist culture in the emergency department .
According to a colleague who nominated Wilson for the Bannister Awards , “ These topics are hard to discuss , especially after the year we have had in the emergency department during the pandemic , but she does it with grace and compassion .”
The twelve-month DARE-EM curriculum asks Brown Emergency Medicine and Brown Physicians caregivers to examine the legacy of structural racism on medicine and assess their own biases while also creating goals for an actively antiracist practice . Participants , who enroll voluntarily , have access to lectures , reading materials , patient-provider simulations and a quarterly book club . DARE-EM also uses internal ED data to examine — and work to fix — disparities in care .
“ As a physician , a nurse or a provider , we don ’ t want to be the reason a person is having a bad day ,” says Wilson , who also serves as an assistant professor at Brown . “ Our jobs are hard enough . It ’ s easy to forget we ’ re not just cogs in a machine . We ’ re treating humans .”
For as long as she can remember , Wilson wanted to be a caregiver . According to family lore , it all began when , at two years old , she ’ d stuck a corn kernel in her ear . Her pediatrician removed it quickly and painlessly .
“ It ’ s an old trite thing ,” Wilson says , “ but I just wanted to do for other folks what that doctor did for me .”
Wilson didn ’ t pursue pediatrics , but she gravitated toward areas of treatment and research where she could provide real relief for her patients . In medical school at the University of Connecticut , she homed in on sickle cell disease , a rare illness marked by pain crises that can require hospitalization .
“ It ’ s a chronic illness that , for the most part , affects people of color and they use opioids to treat their illness ,” she says , “ so there ’ s explicit and implicit bias . We ’ re trying to mitigate that bias because these are the patients , I think , that sometimes get the short shrift when they seek care .”
Wilson says hospitals serving large Black populations , including New York City and Baltimore , have better adherence to sickle cell care guidelines — intravenous pain medication within sixty minutes , Wilson says — while Rhode Island lags behind them .
Earlier this year , she received a $ 300,000 grant that could reinforce those guidelines in places like Rhode Island . Wilson is developing a way for providers to assess patients seated in triage chairs , which could accelerate necessary treatment , prevent hospital admission and , ultimately , restore trust for patients who experience severe pain — “ They feel like they ’ re dying ,” Wilson says — but don ’ t always get treated as such .
If anyone can change that , the Bannister judges agreed , it ’ s Wilson . >>
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