Table 3 Responsiveness to racial challenges scale with scoring examples
Scenario | Score and Anchor | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-3: Strong, immediate negative reaction | -2: Strong negative reaction anytime | −1: Mild negative reaction/ ignoring | 0: Passive reaction | 1: Mild positive reaction | 2: Strong positive reaction anytime | 3: Strong, immediate positive reaction | |
Male (60s) with diabetes: “My last doctor said I was, ‘fat, black, and lazy’.” | -What were you doing to make her say that? -A lot of black men have trouble motivating themselves to take care of their health … -I’m sure they didn’t mean that. | -Okay, and what are your blood pressure levels? | -Fat, black, and lazy, I bet you didn’t like that. -That’s an odd way to talk to a patient. | -Yikes. -That’s not okay! -That must have been painful. | -I’m sorry you experienced that—it sounds awful. -Some doctors are just idiots. -I just can’t believe … I mean I believe it happened, but I can’t believe a doctor said that. | ||
Female (20s) with depression and anxiety: “A white girl would have gotten more callbacks.” | -What did you say on the phone? -I’m sure it wasn’t a race thing. -Y’know, people get so busy this time of year, they probably just didn’t have openings. -I don’t think anyone would base acceptance on race. | -So what kinds of symptoms are we talking about? | -You think not getting a call back was based on your race. | -It must have been hard not to get a call back! | -That sounds really frustrating. I get that you have these experiences all the time, you’re right that white girls get callbacks; I won’t deny racism with you. - I take this seriously and you’re safe to talk about this with me. | ||
Female (late 30s) with five children asking for fertility treatment | -How many kids do you have? (with judgmental inflection) -You could have a basketball team. | -Have you always wanted such a huge family? -Great, welcome! We’ll see how we can help you! | -That sounds like a bad experience. -It sounds like your provider didn’t support your values. | -I apologize that you had to go through that … it’s not really our place to put in our opinion. | - I want to make sure we’re talking about anything we need to … that doesn’t sound right and that wouldn’t land right. -If I ever do that to you, we can talk about it, to make this the best experience for you. | ||
Male (40s) with chronic pain seeking pain medications: Bad ER experience | -We’re trained not to give pain meds to patients who present a risk for addiction. | -Why do you need these pain meds? -What kind of pain meds were you seeking? | -You felt profiled by ER doctors. | -The ER doctors are not there to assume, right? They’re there to listen to you. | -That sounds really invalidating and unfair. It sounds like you were treated like a criminal because of the color of your skin. | ||