Thread by @innodim

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1/ With the epidemic of Medical Establishment-induced hemorrhaging of Black physicians, particularly, Black Women, from academic & clinical medicine, what better time than Black History Month for the entire establishment to turn the mirror on itself & ask the question:

2/ “Why are we like this?”

3/ I’m talking the same degree of root cause analyses conducted on a case of Catheter Associated UTI or Hospital Acquired decubitus ulcer. A thorough internal and external investigation to why the system is chewing and spitting out Black women physicians needs to be conducted .

4/ Questions like, “What is it about our people and the positions we put them; our processes, practices, paradigms, protocols, policies, and norms that is so toxic and dehumanizing that we’d rather risk lower quality of care to our patient base ....

5/ ...by maintaining a homogenous medical work & teaching force, devoid of innovation & creative solutions to solve pervasive medical/social/scientific problems as a result of the systemic exclusion of a vibrant talent pool, simply to maintain a ~400 yr old status quo.

6/ Academic health centers and clinical learning environments need to look within & ask how it came to stay mostly the same for so long with only tiny specks of progress sprinkled along its yellow brick road of history.

7/ Why it messages to Black women physicians in every way that we don’t belong here.
Why it messages to Black men physicians that they don’t belong here and shouldn’t even THINK of “joining in the club”.

8/ You can’t have diversity without belonging.

You can’t have belonging without equity.

You can’t have equity without justice.

You can’t have justice without truth.

You can’t have truth without looking in the mirror.

9/ So enough with the statements.
You are not believed.
The trust is broken.
And you broke it.

To restore it, accountability is required.

10/ Medicine needs a truth and reconciliation commission.

Justice, Equity, Diversity, & Belonging live inside of a system of accountability that begins with the truth.

11/ How can you be in the business of health & healing when you yourself have not healed of your own chronic illness of white supremacy, anti-Black, racism, sexism & intersectional oppressions?

12/ When you harbor some of the most toxic recalcitrant work, practice teaching, and collegial cultures & models?

#irony

13/ It is time to look within and goals space that the medical/health/academic system itself is not just complicit in oppression, but is an active producer and reproducer of these oppressions.

A system functions as it is designed to.

14/ Health disparities are a consequence of all systems, including health, being intrinsically unjust and inequitable (read racist and all the other -ists), as a result of these systems being designed around the dehumanization of Black bodies.

15/ The same applies to the (de)value of Black physicians, nurses, PTs, OTs, Speech therapists, & any healthcare professional in practice or training. We were never meant to even know how to read/write. The system wasn’t designed for us to even exist within it, let alone thrive.

16/ The ongoing & worsening hemorrhage is the natural result. And patients are worse off for it as the literature bears out that not only do BIPOC communities benefit from a diverse, vibrant, and thriving workforce, but EVERYONE benefits.

Everyone means, WHITE PEOPLE too.

17/
How do you, as a system, actively produce the very disease you claim interest in treating?
And why?

So, what now?

Because, this is it.
We are at the critical point.
Right here.

The time is now.

#DNRTulane
#ListenToBlackWomen
#NationalReckoningofRacisminMedScience