Medical researchers at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine looked inward for their latest study — an attempt to capture the experiences of racism faced by Black medical school students. The resulting empirical study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, documents a litany of reported indignities that include a senior doctor defending her use of a racial slur, comments about police brutality against “dangerous” Black people in the United States, and scrutiny that left a student feeling like they did not belong. Interviews were conducted between May and July 2022 with four Black residents and nine Black students at the Saskatoon university.
Lead author Jacob Alhassan, assistant professor of community health and epidemiology at the university, said it was important to document the experiences of Black students as well as residents who had completed their undergraduate training. “Sometimes in the training arena for students, it’s assumed that things wouldn’t be that bad just because they are dealing with their professors,” said Alhassan, the only Black researcher on the study co-authored by two others. “We ended up finding out that experiences of racism are not just between students and patients when students are in the clinical setting but from even their professors or clinicians that they are working with.
” A resident quoted in the study, which does not name any commenter or accused offender, says the doctor who used the.
