Kimani Paul-Emile was quoted in a Wall Street Journal article about racial bias and discrimination in the medical profession.
Dr. Paul-Emile, an associate professor at Fordham University School of Law, published a piece that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2016 called “Dealing with Racist Patients.”
Dr. Paul-Emile calls patient requests for a doctor of a different race or ethnicity “one of medicine’s open secrets,” but says hospitals are starting to pay more attention to the problem.
Patients have the legal right to informed consent, which includes the right to refuse medical treatment. That does not include the right to be treated by a particular physician.
Physicians face the moral and ethical obligation to treat all patients, but the 1964 Civil Rights Act also protects employees from experiencing overt discrimination. That physicians aren’t being discriminated against by their institutions complicates matters. “So it manifests more as a hostile work environment claim if it were to be brought,” Dr. Paul-Emile says.
She is working with a collaborator on creating model protocols and policies to help hospitals address instances of discrimination against health-care providers.