July 19th 2023.
In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, Yale doctor Amanda Joy Calhoun calls for doctors to be outfitted with body cameras similar to those police officers wear. As Calhoun writes, “Many times, I wished the anti-Black responses I experienced in hospital settings were recorded. Body cameras record the actions and behaviors of police in real time, which can be accessed during police violence investigations. Body camera footage is linked to reduced police brutality, and cameras in schools are effective against bullying. Monitoring the actions of individuals can result in self-checking behavior. If we want to see a reduction in poor health outcomes for Black patients, we must hold health care professionals accountable in real time.”
Calhoun is making a case for body cameras being worn by medical professionals, citing the fact that they have been linked to reduced police brutality and bullying in schools. However, Calhoun’s argument is rooted in her personal experiences, such as when her mother, a healthcare professional, was not taken seriously by nurses at a local hospital when she suggested Calhoun’s sister was having an allergic reaction. If the public had access to the footage, it could be determined that evidence of mistreatment of Black patients could potentially lead to doctors losing their licenses for racist attitudes and treatment.
Although body cameras worn by the police have not kept them from killing Black people such as Tyre Nichols, Calhoun still believes that the cameras could be beneficial in reducing medical racism. Tennis superstar Serena Williams was forced to advocate for her own life after her nurses initially dismissed her calls for a heparin drip, and she connected her experience to the larger problem of Black women being three times more likely to die during or after childbirth than their white counterparts.
A 2022 academic paper entitled “Structural Racism In Historical And Modern US History” reveals just how much inequality is baked into the American healthcare system. The paper goes beyond the attitudes and beliefs of individual doctors and ascribes the conditions to a lack of concern about how medical policy affects the lives of Americans. The paper argues that the time has come to eradicate the structural racism in health care policy that perpetuates inequitable access to high-quality health care.
Unfortunately, eliminating the structural racism that is present within every step of the healthcare system has generally not been a priority. While body cams might help in the short term, in the long run, the more effective course of action is eliminating the structural racism present in the entire system. Missed diagnoses, mistreatment, and deaths due to medical racism will not be solved by simply outfitting doctors with body cams. It will require a conscious and sustained effort to ensure that health equity becomes the norm.
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