Esther J. Cepeda: Why Many Latinos Distrust Doctors, Especially During COVID | Opinion

It ‘s fair to say I live under my protective wing of white allies.

I haven’t bought a car, gone to look at a potential new apartment or house on my own, or gone to the hospital without a white, male partner in the last 25 years.

It has been decades since social scientists began documenting how brown car buyers, home buyers and sellers, apartment renters and hospital patients are discriminated against by white car dealership staff, landlords, realtors and medical staff.

It’s awful to boil a human down to his or her race and ethnicity. But these are important ways in which we can understand that not all people – not just white people – have biases and internalized stereotypes that hurt others.

A new study in the medical journal JAMA Network found that Latino family members of COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) patients faced higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than other groups.

According to the authors’ study, it is known from past research that “active involvement of families in bedside reduces stress-related symptoms, and a reduction in symptoms of PTSD has been associated with increased family member participation and control at the bedside. . “

If you know people from Latin America, not only is it considered disrespectful to send your loved one to the hospital alone, but, chances are, there will be 24-hour bedside sitting with multiple family members, food, maybe some music to soothe the patient. , but more than anything: presence.

Please imagine how strict protocols for quarantining and firm rules against visitors in hospitals and nursing homes affected a person who, for the past five years, had already been buffeted by an anti-immigrant president.

The findings, collected from data in 2020, show the onset of the pandemic, showing that COPID-19 patients of Hispanic families in the ICU were more likely to experience symptoms associated with PTSD. These include symptoms such as agitation, hypervigilance, flashbacks, fear, severe anxiety, mistrust. You get the idea.

Higher PTSD symptoms were significantly associated with Hispanic ethnicity, female gender and previous medication use for a psychiatric condition, the study reported. “Higher scores with family members are more commonly described as distractions of feelings and concerns need to be taken to clinicians’ information at face value without being present for themselves to see.”

The cumulative effect of all of these interactions, the authors believe, is to sow more distrust into medical practitioners. This, in turn, makes any subsequent outbreak more dangerous for people reaching out to the medical establishment, and for anyone who comes in contact with them.

The distrust is justified.

Just as a terrible history of misdeeds has been perpetrated on Black people by the US government – the most famous is the 1932-1972 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” – many stories about the US government’s treatment of Native Americans. , Asian Americans and, of course, Hispanics are untold or little-known.

Since the 1930s, Latinas – both native and foreign born – have been sterilized by force or without permission in this country. And this is not old news. As recently as 2020, a formal complaint was filed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement nurse with the Homeland Security’s inspector general. The nurse alleged that detainees were denied medical care and were possibly forced into unnecessary hysterectomies.

Buying a home or a car is important times in life. But the uncertainty and fear that comes with illness and seeking medical attention bumps into the power dynamic between the historically white hospital system and doctor corps and Hispanic patients at a different level.

Feeling mistreated at a doctor’s office or hospital is nothing new to anyone who has had to navigate the health care system. But it’s genuinely different for people of color.

The study found that Latino families often lacked the kind of empathetic support that white medical staff received from others. “Fewer Latinos – 11.8% – reported the compassion of ‘above and beyond’ activities from medical staff compared to about 35% of non-Latinos,” the report stated.

White health care providers make assumptions when your name sounds ethnic – that you don’t speak English, that you need to be spoken too loudly, that you don’t comprehend “big” words, that you’re too poor to trust with Following through on doctor’s orders or that you are too likely to abuse drugs to be trusted with painkillers.

It’s in the way, for example, a nurse will talk in a soft, sing-song voice to a white patient in the next bed over but then turn to your dark brown-skinned family member and speak in an all-business tone. It is in the way some people are not even considered to have health insurance.

This, too, shall pass (I hope). The Association of American Medical Colleges reports that, overall, the class that entered medical school in 2021 was more diverse. While 51.5% of students entering medical school identified as white and 26.5% identified as Asian, substantial gains have occurred among those who identify as Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish origin. They make up 12.7% (up from 12% in 2020). Black students make up 11.3% (up from 9.5%).

Until the day those kids all graduate, I ‘ll be showing up to the doctor’s white allies who can insulate me from the humiliations of being brown and alone in a medical setting.