Quillen, 1

Dallas Quillen
Yolanda Franklin
English 1101
28 July 2015
Whiteness in the Medical Field
When I was asked to write this blog, I must admit that I had absolutely no idea as to
what I should write about; my mind was closed to possibilities that stretched the prompt, it
probably still is. I will not lie and say that I know exactly what to write about, I do not. But since
this is my own personal blog, starting with myself seems like a pretty good place to begin. And
hopefully along the way I will stretch my mind, find my paper, and maybe even find some bit of
myself.
I grew up in a fairly decent white neighborhood. There was Joe DiMaggio Hospital right
down the street. When my older sister gave birth to her son you could see my house from her
hospital window, I however never managed to find it in the maze of streets and homes. I went to
a middle and high school that were located in what white people would often call a bad
neighborhood. I never found anything wrong with the neighborhood; it was just in a low income
area and had a large black population. The people were still nice and I met new people of all
races and backgrounds. I think that going to these schools has helped me accept people in ways
that others do not.
During sixth grade I took gymnastics class at the local YMCA in my neighborhood. I had
been in gymnastics for only a year but had advanced farther than the other girls in my class had.
My first teacher was Ms. Alecia, she was short and stout and had a strong Hispanic accent. She
often used me as an example for how to do a proper cartwheel but I remember her getting

Quillen, 2
extremely flustered with me when I could not manage to do a backwards summersault on the
balance beam without falling or without help. My next teacher, when I moved up to the next
level, was Coach T. He was black and very tall, he was always smiling and I really enjoyed him
as my teacher. I would have stayed in gymnastics for years had it not been for the day after sixth
grade got out. At the end of our lesson we were allowed to relax and play in the foam pit for a
few minutes. Some of the girls were running and jumping in so I decided to partake in the
activity as well. I unfortunately had underestimated how far I could jump and the heel of my
right foot had missed the pit and instead collided with the wall. I laid there in the pit paralyzed
with pain and had to be dragged out.
My dad thought I had just sprained my ankle badly and we waited a week to see if the
swelling went down any. It did not. Despite Joe DiMaggio being seen from the sidewalk in front
of my house, my stepmom took me to a hospital up in Boca Raton, Florida. We found out that I
had a hairline fracture adjacent to my growth plate and I needed to get a cast right away or else
my leg would be in danger of not growing anymore. So I got the cast, three in fact because I was
healing slower than the doctors thought, and had my leg encased all summer. About two months
later I finally had it removed. My lower leg was so white and quite honestly, it looked rather
disgusting, almost like a limp noodle attached to my knee. The doctor said I might have a hard
time walking but I did not take his words too seriously; until I got down off the examination
bench and immediately stumbled to the ground. It took about three minutes to walk the fifteen
foot hallway to the X-Ray room. I had to grasp the handrail on the wall while a nurse held me on
the other side.
My ankle does still hurt sometimes, I can feel where I fractured it if I press down hard
enough. But nonetheless I was heeled and ready to go home and start picking up all the little bits

Quillen, 3
of my casts that had been falling apart and strewn themselves all over my bedroom carpet. I was
disappointed to discover after this two month absence of mine that Coach T had quit his job at
the YMCA and had actually moved away. Because of this, and my not wanting to put the
financial stress on my parents, I never went back to gymnastics.
I am able to laugh about this event now, how I broke my ankle on the inch of foam
padding glued to the wall and how I spent my whole summer in a cast. I reiterate this story not
for memories sake or just sharing to share, but because I think it a suitable introduction to race in
the medical field. I struck that fateful wall a little over six years ago, when I was eleven. At the
time I was not thinking about the races around me, but as I reflect back, I remember seeing so
many white people. The nurses were white, the doctors were white, the patients and the
receptionist were white. Of course not everyone was white, there was one black nurse, but still,
only one. And why, I think now, was there only one? Sure Boca Raton is a wealthy area of South
Florida, but still. Still.
I have done a bit of research as to the amount of college degrees awarded to blacks versus
the amount awarded to whites. This is a chart that I found that is better seen than spelled out:

Quillen, 4

As you can see, the facts are relatively recent, ending in 2010, just 5 years ago. I must say
that this chart would be more beneficial if it included the population of each race for it appears as
if every race had the same amount of people, but it still manages to show how much more white
people were earning degrees than black people were. The people who assisted me when I broke
my ankle I would guess earned their degrees around 1999 or earlier. Assuming that, say the
nurses and assistants in the Boca Raton hospital, earned their degrees in 1999, it would make
sense that there was only one black nurse, because for every one black person who earned an
Associates Degree (the minimum required Degree to become a registered nurse) that year,

Quillen, 5
nearly 7 white people earned one. And that is not even taking into account just the people who
earned their degree in nursing or health care.
But I appreciate this graph for another reason; it shows how many more white people go
to college than black people (although this chart does not include the dropouts of the races). A
discrepancy that is slowly but surely closing and hopefully one day, the figures will be nearly, if
not completely, the same across the board. I have done some further research, to better narrow in
on the medical field and found that, in 2013, 23.6% of nurses identified as Black or African
American, while 75.4% identified as White. Even though these are better statistics than those in
the chart about degree earnings, it still means that for every one black nurse, there are three white
nurses.
Although for this blog post I am focusing specifically on whites and blacks in the medical
field, I would like to dapple a bit in the other races. Continuing with the statistics I have just
mentioned, in 2013 7.5% of nurses identified as Hispanic, 3.6% as Asian, 1.4% as more than one
race, and 0.6% identified themselves as Native American or Alaskan Native. These numbers
make the fact that there are so many white nurses more understandable. The Hispanic and Asian
races can also be compared to the numbers of white degree earners in the chart above. Even
though the populations are excluded, it is clear to see that whites soared over Hispanics and
Asians in addition to Blacks in the amount of college degrees awarded.
I am going to change gears a bit now here and ask you to recall that I grew up with a
hospital at the end of the road and that I went to middle and high school in a bad
neighborhood. Speaking of the degree earnings and positions filled gap got me thinking of
another possible gap. Is the treatment of minorities, blacks in particular, far less substantial than
the treatment of whites? I went to school in this bad area for five years and never once saw a

Quillen, 6
hospital or the blue road sign with a white H on it to direct you to one. I think that maybe the
reason there was no hospital in this area is because of the socioeconomic factor. Being
predominantly black and the income rather low, I suppose this location did not look very
appealing for a hospital.
In my research I found that a big reason as to why there is a gap between whites and
blacks in medical treatment is because of the hospital locations. A five year study that included
around 4,000 hospitals, some in white neighborhoods, white hospitals, and some in black
neighborhoods, black hospitals, found that hospitals in a dominantly black area tended to be
less equipped than hospitals in predominantly white areas. The study interestingly found that
people of different races within each of the hospitals received similar care, but more people died
in the black hospitals than the white hospitals due to the lack of technology and equipment
available to them. Although this information was discovered, the study did not rule out any racial
discrimination in individual treatment from the doctors or nurses.
So I went on a little quest to find studies that do look into the racial discrimination in
medical treatment. In one study conducted by the Disparities Solutions Center with help from
Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, doctors were shown a virtual black
male and a white male on a monitor. Both of the men complained of chest pains and reported
other symptoms associated with a heart attack. The doctors were to choose what medication to
give each of the patients. The study concluded that the doctors were much less likely to prescribe
a medication that could have saved the patients life to the black male than the white male. A
similar study yielded similar results. In this second study, pediatricians were asked to prescribe a
painkiller to imagined teenagers who had just come out of surgery. The painkiller options were
oxycodone and Ibuprofen, with oxycodone being the go to, ideological, medication. Even with

Quillen, 7
oxycodone being the best choice, the pediatricians overwhelmingly decided to prescribe
Ibuprofen to the black teenagers while they choose oxycodone for the white teenagers.
In other areas of medical treatment, white women are more likely to be screened for
breast cancer than black women are. The chances of a black woman dying from breast cancer are
nearly 50 times more likely than the chances of a white woman. Black women are also less likely
to get prenatal care within the first trimester than a white pregnant woman is, and blacks with
phenomena are less likely to receive the recommended care to get better than whites with
phenomena. The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality has even introduced activities and
projects to help diminish the discrepancies in the treatment of blacks and whites in the medical
field. It is important to keep in mind, however, what I wrote about earlier-that much of the care
that whites and blacks receive is correlated to the hospitals that they go to, the care is not solely
based on the color of the patients skin. It is also important not to ignore that black people are
typically less wealthy than white people are and because of this some blacks may be less likely
to go get the treatment they need because of their financial situation.
This blog was supposed to be connected to the arts, naturally when I read that I
thought, drawing and painting, music, theater, etc. in other words, societys definition of arts. But
is the medical field not an art? Doctors, nurses, care takers, and physical therapists constantly
have to create new methods and programs for their patients. They have to alter systems and
typical treatments for every patient. Plans and specific requirements and goals need to be drafted
for each patient, because while cases might be the same, people are not each has their own
needs to be dealt with and what works for one patient may not work for another. When looked at
the field this way, it looks quite creative and artsy to me.

Quillen, 8
People like to boast about how racism is diminishing and blacks and whites have equal
treatment now. But that this not true. Sure blacks and whites can get along and be friends; many
even marry now which is great. However, racism and discrimination is still here, it is in the
streets, it is in the way people look at each other, and it is in our health care system. It is affecting
the treatment people are receiving and is even playing a role in determining who lives and who
dies (recall the study where doctors decided not to give a lifesaving drug to a black male in the
event of a possible heart attack while they decided to give the same drug to a white male). Some
of this discrimination is unconscious, in other words, the doctors are not always aware that they
are behaving this way, but it is still there and is still much too prominent.
I am currently attending Florida State University, and am an undergraduate in Family and
Child Sciences. After I graduate I hope to become a Pediatric Physical Therapist. I want to work
in a facility where all the kids are treated equally and do not receive treatment that depends on
the color of their skin. I want to work in a facility that doesnt only have one black worker while
the rest are white. I dont want to see kids getting mediocre treatment, or none at all for that
matter, because they dont have the financial abilities to get the care they need. If I can manage
it, I want to work in a place that is flexible for kids of low income families, so they are not left
behind and rendered unable to receive the care they require. I believe everyone, children
especially, deserve equal treatment. Children are the worlds future, we cannot keep setting our
future off from the get go with hurdles of discrimination and limitations in front of them to try to
jump over.

Quillen, 9
Resources:

"College & University." BlackDemographicscom. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Aug.

2015.
Durgin, Jennifer. "Race Affects Care at the Hospital Level." Dartmouth
Medicine Magazine :: Discoveries : Race Affects Care at the Hospital
Level. Dartmouth Medicine Magazine, 2005. Web. 02 Aug.

"Healthcare 411." AHRQ Activities to Reduce Racial and Ethnic

Disparities in Health Care. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Aug. 2015.
Ho, Vanessa. "Doctors Treated Black Patients Worse in UW Study."
Seattlepi. N.p., 19 Mar. 2012. Web. 02 Aug. 2015.
"Nursing Statistics." Minority Nurse. Springer Publishing Company, n.d.
Web. 02 Aug. 2015.
Pearl, Robert. "Why Health Care Is Different If You're Black, Latino Or
Poor." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 05 Mar. 2015. Web. 02 Aug. 2015.
"Race in Medical Care: Skin Color Matters with Patient Care." ABC News.
ABC News Network, 21 July 2007. Web. 02 Aug. 2015.