Pre-Med Perspectives: Pre-Medical Students’ Attitudes Towards Race/Racism, Social Inequality, & Medicine

• In Event: Medical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 21. Medical Education

Abstract

Studying the pre-medical period of medical education can provide researchers with valuable insights into how medical trainees form their core beliefs and value systems. Given the racially disparate landscape of the modern American healthcare system, it is critical that scholars elucidate the process by which harmful beliefs/values regarding racial inequality are instilled in medical trainees. This study examines pre-medical students’ beliefs about race, racism, and social inequality in the context of pursuing a career in medicine. Using data from 28 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with advanced pre-medical students at a public university in the southern U.S., I found that pre-medical students often relied on core tenets of the dominant biomedical knowledge regime when discussing race/racism in healthcare. I contend the biomedical knowledge regime, characterized by scientific objectivity and color-blindness, is associated with problematic notions of race/racism and poses a barrier to the adoption of alternative forms of knowledge, such as antiracism.

Author

• Savannah Salato, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill