Introduction
In today’s world, the damaging problem of the racial disparities keeps affecting the workers of the health care systems, as well as its patients. The existence of the racial dimension in medical treatment and health service system, as well as the patient-provider interactions, has a significant impact on the communicational and professional aspects of the healthcare provider. Therefore, it is essential to learn how organizations should respond to the overt racism received from the patients through examining the nature and the scope of such an issue. Considering the organizations’ responsibility, the display of discrimination can be dramatically decreased by training both professional and nonprofessional workforce, and by adopting zero-tolerance policies.
Main body
Unfortunately, racism is poorly classified as an ethical issue in terms of health care ethics discourse. According to Paradies, Truong, and Priest (2013), racism can be described as the phenomena that support or aggravates the preventable and unfair “inequalities in power, resources or opportunities across racial, ethnic, cultural or religious groups” (p. 364). From the ethical point of view, facing racial assaults addressed by patients to the clinicians leads to inequality in the medical professional field. Concerning the issue of the possible scenario in personal practice as a nurse, PhDs Garran and Rasmussen (2019) give several cases of such the occurrence.
For instance, an individual or family may specifically ask for the white health worker. Such a request is more likely embedded in religious belief, gender preferences, or linguistic barriers (Garran et al., 2019, para. 4). Speaking of the racial assaults, it is crucial to mention its outcome in the face of the emotional harm that the clinician is facing. For the health practitioner of color, this results in the ethical conflict between the obligations of providing care, as well as the attention to the patients’ wishes to avoid any harm. Garran et al. (2019) state that one of the strategies to avert the conflict lies in obtaining the skills of technical speaking. Besides, Paradies et al. (2013) provide profound studies of the evidence of racism among medical workers. The results gave no particular “patterns emerged by country, study population, healthcare setting, or measurement approach” (p. 383). However, when asking the health workers of color directly about the impact of the racism, it was concluded that it is also crucial for the clinician to be confident in his conceptualization of client problems excluding any stereotypes or biases.
Conclusion
Understanding the impact of the racial disparities in terms of the interrelations of the health care workers and their patients is indeed not an easy question to discuss. However, by learning the possible cases, presented by Garran and Rasmussen in the medical practice and analyzing multiple studies, provided by Paradies et al., it is evident that a fundamental reformation in organizational policies is necessary. The health care organizations should face a wide range of racism’s manifestations in medicine and prioritize essential steps and strategies to reduce it. Otherwise, there might be a risk of losing the talented clinicians of color and deepened mistrust of the patients. On the part of the clinicians, the informed health care work force has to be motivated enough to face difficult conversations. Thus, the workers will be willing to solve vital conflicts by using the policies of respect and zero tolerance and will undoubtedly succeed in their medical practice.
References
Garran, A., & Rasmussen, B. (2019). How should organizations respond to racism against health care workers?
Paradies, Y., Truong, M., & Priest, N. (2013). A systematic review of the extent and measurement of healthcare provider racism. Journal of general internal medicine, 29(2), 364-387. doi: 10.1007/s11606-013-2583-1