More Than One Medical Student At UVA Believes Black People Don't Feel Pain

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According to the school, the survey, led by Kelly M. Hoffman, a sixth-year doctoral candidate (ABD) in the social psychology program at the University of Virginia, asked 222 white medical students and residents to rate on a scale of zero to 10 the pain levels they would associate with two mock medical cases — a kidney stone and a leg fracture — for both a white and a black patient, and “to recommend pain treatments based on the level of pain they thought the patients might be experiencing.”

The survey also asked them whether they believed certain statements about whites and blacks were true, e.g., black people age more slowly than whites, black people have less sensitive nerve endings and black people’s blood coagulates more quickly. Surprisingly, over 100 students believed these fallacies to be factual.

Those who believed that information to be true rated black patients’ pain lower than they did white patients’.

“Many previous studies have shown that black Americans are undertreated … because physicians might assume black patients might abuse the medications or because they might not recognize the pain of their black patients in the first place,” said Hoffman.

http://college.usatoday.com/2016/04/05/uva-report-med-students-black-people-feel-less-pain/