DOCTORS' LOUNGE
DOCTORS'
LOUNGE
WHITE COATS
FOR BLACK
LIVES
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Immunity must nearly always be earned.
As babies, we must survive nine months
inside and then spend three months with
our mothers’ protection, but all the time
we are growing and getting our immune
systems in gear. We survive exposure after
exposure, and gain vaccine after vaccine.
Our immune systems process billions of
foreign-to-us molecules, and until we catch a
cold, or break out in hives, we barely notice.
In our racist society, White people going about our daily rounds
are generally immune to brutal, capricious police ambush. That is
not earned. It’s simply an accident of birth. Most of us law-abiders
only encounter the police if we speed, wreck or get drunk. Speeding
while White is unlikely to end with us arrested, slammed to
the ground or shot. I was taught to ask the police for help when in
trouble, and I’ve had the freedom to ask without fear.
As doctors, we have more training in human relationships than
nearly everybody. We learn early and often that every single patient
requires the best of us, every single patient must be respected and
heard, every single patient is more important than we are. We treat
them for things we are not immune to. We serve close to combat
and in remote missions and in our everyday offices. When we are
called, we answer. We have to understand where our patients are
28 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
IMMUNITY INEQUALITY AUTHOR Mary Barry, MD
coming from, what informs their complaint, and what barriers to
diagnosis, much less treatment, block their way.
And yet, we make mistakes, from hurrying, not listening, not
looking it up, not calling a consultant. We fail to know the patient.
We fail to examine the patient. We open a bleeder or get inadequate
exposure. We brush off that jolt of alarm, instead of acting on it.
We are not immune to being wrong, not immune to being rude,
not immune to making assumptions, and certainly not immune
to clicking the wrong box because it is simply the seventeen-thousandth
click of the day.
We are therefore not immune to harming patients. When that
happens, we can get sued. “Not Getting Sued” is a powerful motivator
over many, many years. Your conscience speaks to you, and
then this voice inside nudges you.
“Hey! - Why aren’t you calling him back?”
“Are you sure in your heart this isn’t meningitis?”
“I KNOW, how many times do we have to go through this…but
is this a blood clot and not just swelling? Come on…get it right…”
That is the voice of “Not Getting Sued.” That is the extra check
and balance that helps keep doctors sharp, helps us not get careless,
helps us remember that we are accountable not just to the patient
but to everyone who loves her, everyone she will one day help,