Cocoa Pods

Welcome Dr Bootstaylor a maternal fetal medicine specialist and founder of See Baby in Atlanta Georgia To discuss today are; A) high risk issues especially relating to black and other minority women that can lead to maternal ( mother ) and fetal ( baby) morbidity and mortality ( ie being very very sick ) and how the risk can be mitigated B) the issues minority physicians face in taking care of their minority patients A caste system exists and persists also in medicine And as written by author Isabel Wilkerson in Caste -the origins of our discontents, there is a millennia-old phenomenon and we need to cast light onto history, it’s ongoing consequences and it’s presence in our everyday lives. There are gaps of disparity, the torn (or never present ) kinships in the medical community and the fraying infrastructure especially in the south -all these left America— for all its wealth and innovation -lagging in major indicators of quality of life -like maternal mortality ( mothers especially minority-dying in and around pregnancy) Also we discuss topics of: 1.Structural discrimination in health care 2.Notoriously, physicians from diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds risk being sacrificed in mechanisms that heavily prioritize an internal pipeline 3.Applying the principles of holistic review in alignment with institutional values to ensure fairness is necessary. 4. What is the perception around minority physicians and support, relative to their other race counterparts 5.The promotion of diversity, inclusion, and belonging is a cornerstone of the success of the medical profession overall and especially of addressing the unmet needs of health care. 5.As a minority physician have you received verbal abuse, threats, threats from contract employers and certifying boards, and how this affects your ability to care for your minority patients 6.How as a minority physician you have to deal with all of these issues and still be available to take care of your patients ( or not ) Of important note: Virtually in every clinical scenario or disease state, minority patients represent a higher burden of disease, and severity of disease is higher in them Risk categorize any variety of medical conditions, almost always, disease state or disease burden is highest in blacks / minority patients . Often times these patients access the health care system later in the course of their illnesses Many of these patients will present to usually their minority health care providers The minority providers/ physicians face a particular burden of ostracization and lack of support in most systems /institutions and this creates a peculiar mismatch so that physicians who are least supported now have to care of the most complicated patients Patients presenting late are prone to more adverse outcomes for example preeclampsia and low birth weight Minority physicians are then now judged against their non minority (and supported) physicians counterparts who are perhaps seeing the least complex patients Minority physicians are already less supported so institutions are apt to take more adverse actions against minority doctors based on reported unfavorable outcomes that may in turn eventually affect their minority patients, such as the minority doctors clinical privileges, adverse actions, employability, insurability or straight forward ability to practice the profession Unfortunate outcome is a shorter career time span to practice for minority clinicians and further aggravating the minority physicians shortage / number of minority physicians in practice