Why Black Women Need Black Doctors

It was the day after my emergency c-section.  I laid in the hospital bed quivering because I couldn’t get warm.  I had been up walking around, not because I wanted to, but because the nurse made me.  I was still in so much pain after having labored for 48 hours and then cut on.  I had piles of blankets on me and my family asked the resident doctor if she could bring more.  She asked me a few questions and proceeded to take my temperature.  Everything changed after that. 

The resident, a young African-American doctor, left and returned in just minutes. My well-known and highly respected African-American doctor came in and went in to hyper drive.  She asked me some questions, looked at my incision, and told me that I would be transfused in the morning. To be honest, I’m not sure if she used the word hemorrhaged.  I know she said I had lost a lot of blood during the c-section.  She allowed my family and I to ask all the questions we needed before sending in the nurses to begin the preparation.

Would I have received this same treatment had I had a doctor of another race?  I do not know. What I do know is my family and I did not know that anything was wrong.  I do know that the resident listened to me and probed when we asked for more blankets.  If she had not listened, who knows what the outcome would have been. 

My story, unfortunately, is more common than I would like to admit, with the exception of the doctors listening and acting quickly.

The maternal mortality rate reported in 2018 by the Center for Disease Control was 17.4 per 100,000 live births.  Among black women, the rate is 37.1 deaths per 100,000 live births.  There are several reasons for these differences:

1.     Inadequate access to healthcare

2.     Less likely to be routinely monitored

3.     More likely to receive delayed diagnoses or treatments

4.     Subpar care

The maternal mortality rate for African-American women is a crisis and it continues, even here in Texas, home to the largest medical center in the world. 

Research suggests that patient-provider racial and gender concordance can have many benefits.  For example, a black female patient receiving care from a black female doctor has more trust, better communication, and shared medical decision-making.  Additional research shows improved engagement and more detailed reporting for black patients when treated by black doctors.

There are so many things out of a woman’s control during pregnancy, but one thing she does have control over is choosing her provider. Choosing a doctor of the same ethnicity may be the difference between life and death.