A Yale University physician proposes that hospitals mandate doctors to wear body cameras as an effort to address instances of racism while treating patients of color.
Dr. Amanda Calhoun, a third-year psychiatry resident at the Yale School of Medicine Yale Child Study Center who specializes in child and adult psychiatry, wrote an op-ed for the Boston Globe, detailing her concerns about the mistreatment of Black patients while under white surgeons’ care. She also shared a personal experience, one that deeply colored her perspective.
“If hospitals and medical institutions want to make good on those anti-racism statements made in 2020, prove it: Have health care professionals wear body cameras,” Calhoun wrote referencing the summer of civil unrest after George Floyd’s death and many organizations’ promises to do more to combat racial discrimination.
According to Calhoun, she witnessed white medical professionals initiate racist acts directed toward Black patients, making jokes about young Black children joining gangs, and doctors described the natural hair of Black individuals as “wild” and “unkempt.”
“I have seen Black patients unnecessarily physically restrained,” she continued. “I have stood in the emergency department as a Black teenager died from a gunshot wound while White staff chuckled, saying he was ‘just another criminal.’”
The physician, who is writing a book about the mental health effects of anti-Black racism, suggested if the doctors were made to wear body cameras, the footage could be used as evidence in cases of racism. Should this be instituted the families of patients could give consent for the release of such footage if they wished to file complaints.
In her opinion, the technology would introduce a viable means to not only hold healthcare professionals accountable but also reassure patients.
Moreover, she offered to be the first doctor to volunteer to wear a body camera, urging hospitals and medical institutions to follow suit and demonstrate their commitment to fighting racism.
While it remains uncertain whether Yale officials will adopt this suggestion, Calhoun’s suggestion is partially based on her own sister’s experiences while in a medical professional’s care.
She recalled a time when her sister was having an allergic reaction.
“Despite my mom’s insistence that my 9-year-old sister could be suffering from a deadly allergic reaction and seemed to be wheezing, white nurses refused to treat her with urgency, leaving them sitting in the waiting room,” she wrote. “Without even properly examining my sister, the nurses informed my mother she would have detected a nut allergy earlier in my sister’s life if it was serious.”
