Les médecins doivent comprendre les expériences vécues par les patients pour bien les soigner — mais les facultés de médecine pourraient cesser d’exiger cette formation | Naa Asheley Ashitey

in OpinionMEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Irene Michel, right, gives Alma Chavez, 51, left, a COVID-19 vaccination booster at a community resource center in Los Angeles. Research shows that health outcomes vary with many structural factors, like income and ethnicity, but medical schools are poised to do away with the requirement that students learn how to address those disparities.(Image credit: Francine Orr via Getty Images)Share this article 0Join the conversationFollow usAdd us as a preferred source on GoogleSubscribe to our newsletter

Humans are not isolated, interchangeable biological machines. We seek medical care carrying complicated backstories, life experiences, and cultural perspectives that shape how we experience illness, communicate pain, and respond to treatment.

For decades, medicine ignored this fact and the cost fell heaviest on patients from marginalized groups. Study after study has documented the result: stark disparities in health outcomes that track closely with race, income, zip code, and immigration status.

Medicine has only recently begun to reckon with this blind spot. For the last few years, medical students across the country have been required to receive training in what are called “social determinants of health” to better understand how trauma, poverty, racism, and life experience shape what patients bring into the exam room and what they need from the people treating them.

But the board governing medical school accreditation no longer wants this training to be mandatory. This would be a big step back for medicine. Keeping these standards in place is essential for making a more effective medical workforce that can deliver the best care possible while doing no harm.

My experience with both sides of the medical system — as a second-year MD/PhD student and a patient — shows why this training is so necessary.

Naa Asheley Ashitey