more likely to suggest inappropriate medical treatment for Black patients.” That’s wild.
The overall survey included 100 regular everyday people and over 400 medical students and residents of different racial groups, asking them what they thought about statements like “Black people’s nerve endings are less sensitive than white people’s nerve endings” (which the authors say is false) and “Whites are less likely to have a stroke than blacks” (which the authors say is true).
They also asked participants to imagine how much pain white or black individuals would experience in situations like getting their hand slammed in a car door.
Researchers also asked medical students to suggest treatment for the patients. Then they looked at the relationship between those three categories.
There were several false beliefs across the board. But for white respondents specifically, those false beliefs correlated with their belief that blacks feel less pain, on average.
What’s even more disturbing is those medical students and residents with a higher than average level of false beliefs gave less accurate advice more percentage of the time.
In another study, researchers examined data from 14 previously published studies of pain management in American emergency rooms (ERs) that altogether included 7,070 white patients, 1,538 Hispanic patients, and 3,125 black patients.
Compared to white patients, black patients were 40% less likely to receive medication to ease acute pain and Hispanic patients were 25% less likely, the analysis found.
“The reasons for these disparities are