The goal of a doctor is often to try and cure their patients.
But there are certain special doctors out there that want to make sure they are both curing and caring for their patients.
These are the doctors that go the extra mile and perform tasks outside of their job description or below their pay grade to make sure their patients feel whole and have all their bases covered when being cared for in a medical setting and when they leave that setting.
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India Marshall was lucky enough to have one of these doctors when she recently had surgery to remove bone growths on her forehead.
But something peculiar occurred when she came out of surgery.
She realized that her hair had been braided even though she didn’t go into surgery with her hair braided.
https://www.facebook.com/iwinford/posts/10158048173946187
“My head was really bandaged up when I first came out of surgery. So it was time to clean the incisions and we took the bandages off and I was touching my hair and stuff and I looked in the mirror and I was like, ‘Oh, someone braided my hair,’” Marshall told TODAY Style. “I thought it was nice that I had the braids in a way where we could easily get to the incisions and my hair was out of the way, which was very nice because I felt really sick after surgery and in pain.”
so y’all know how I said I woke up from surgery w/more braids in my head than I came in w/and I thought it was the black nurses? I found out today at my post op appt that the surgeon (he’s black) did it. He said he has 3 little girls & they have wash day… I almost cried
— india. (@IndiaDionna) June 24, 2020
Marshall assumed it was one of the nurses that had done this until she found out that her surgeon, Dr. Jewel Greywoode, was actually responsible for the handiwork.
“So y’all know how I said I woke up from surgery w/more braids in my head than I came in w/and I thought it was the black nurses? I found out today at my post-op appt that the surgeon (he’s black) did it,” she wrote on Twitter. “He said he has 3 little girls & they have wash day… I almost cried.”
while removing my staples he said “your braids look better than mine, I hope I didn’t do too bad” and I was like excuse me??? YOU did my hair???… you could tell he was so proud to tell me too lol pic.twitter.com/GRzG3f05Qk
— india. (@IndiaDionna) June 24, 2020
Marshall said she was overjoyed to learn that a black man is active in caring for his girls.
She was also overjoyed to have a black doctor that was cognizant of her needs as a black woman.
“Feeling seen when receiving medical care matters, Black Doctors are important,” she wrote on Facebook.
Marshall said she knows that the care she received would have only been possible by having a black doctor because he understood her hair.
“He also brought up that he didn’t use sutures or stitches because he didn’t want to cut my hair when removing it. The staples are easier to take out,” she explains. “So that was just another example of how he was able to understand me as a Black woman and the importance of my hair and preserving it.”
he also said he used staples to close my incisions instead of stitches to avoid cutting my hair when removing stitches. pic.twitter.com/gUDcjPLQ9C
— india. (@IndiaDionna) June 24, 2020
She also encouraged her Twitter followers to “find black doctors” which she said can sometimes be hard.
Marshall’s Tweet ended up going viral and was retweeted more than 72,000 times.
Many people commented on her Twitter post that this is just one of the many reasons that we need more black people in medicine.
https://twitter.com/IndiaDionna/status/1275915588129480705
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges says only 5 percent of active physicians identified as Black in 2018. About 56.2 percent identified were white, 17.1 percent were Asian, 5.8 percent Hispanic, and 13.7 percent were listed as unknown.
Medical professionals have found a multitude of reasons for the low percentage of black doctors, including segregation and racism.
“Segregation and racism within the medical profession have, and continue to, profoundly impact the African American community,” the American Medical Association writes.
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In addition to racism, a 2007 study published by the Journal of the National Medical Association also asked students what they perceived as barriers for African Americans to pursue careers as physicians and found that students cited:
- financial constraints
- lack of knowledge about medicine
- little/no encouragement at home or in school
- negative peer views on excelling academically
- lack of African-American role models in the community and on TV
- more appealing alternatives for making money
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“Students stated that increasing the number of African-American physicians would enhance patient-physician communication and relationships, and more African Americans would become physicians if there were greater exposure to medicine in schools, more guidance at a younger age, and more role models,” the study found.
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In addition to being able to relate to and understand the needs of their patients more, having more black doctors can also save more black lives and lead to better health outcomes for African Americans.
A 2018 study published in the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, found that black men were more likely to trust the medical system and discuss their medical issues with black doctors, as well take their advice and suggestions for care. Black doctors were more also more likely to write additional notes on these patients.
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Black men had better health outcomes with black doctors because they were able to communicate better “rather than discrimination or measures of doctor quality and eort.” The study also found that black doctors could help to reduce cardiovascular mortality by 16 deaths per 100,000 per year leading to a 19% reduction in the black-white male gap in cardiovascular mortality.
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“Black Americans continue to experience some of the worst health outcomes of any racial group. Black men have the shortest life expectancies. Black women have the highest maternal mortality rates. Black babies have the highest infant mortality rates,” writes Dr. Uché Blackstock, found and CEO of Advancing Health Equity. “Diversifying the health care workforce to reflect patient populations is one solution. But that is a tall order when health care work environments can be unwelcoming and discriminatory to Black health care providers.”
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