Within the medical field, there have been incidents where African American women have experienced negligence from their doctors which has resulted in them not having the opportunity to express the symptoms they’ve been going through. It has also caused danger for those women due to the lack of attention given to them and their medical needs. These incidences have occurred because of the hidden racism within those people working in the healthcare field.

An example of this sort of thing happening in real life is when Serena Williams was having complications shortly after the birth of her daughter, Alexis Olympia. Due to previous health issues with pulmonary embolisms, she began coughing and felt very short of breath a while after the birth. So, she alerted the nurse and told them that she needed them to run a CT scan and an IV heparin as soon as possible, as reported by Vox. But, the doctors thought she was just confused because of the pain medicine they had given her. Instead of taking her to get a CT scan, they performed an ultrasound of her legs, which later revealed nothing and so she then underwent a CT scan and they found many blood clots that had settled in her lungs. Shortly after that, she was undergoing the IV treatment she had called for in the beginning. 

This shows that even after describing your symptoms to your doctor as a black woman, it’s not that rare to be dismissed and invalidated of your current health situation, even though you’re the one who’s experiencing the pain and knows what’s going on with how you’re feeling. This seemed to be something several black women share in common and “Serena Williams’s story shows just how hard it can be for black women at all levels of society,” as stated by Vox.

This type of treatment is not only unfair, but has a huge chance of being dangerous for the patient dealing with that sort of maltreatment. Doctors and/or people with the profession in the field of medicine or surgery should not ignore their patients worries. Their job is to “maintain or restore human health through the practice of medicine” according to CareerExplorer. And if they aren’t meeting that goal, then they are not properly providing their patients with the care and attention they deserve. Being a nurse/ doctor is a difficult job, without a doubt. But there seem to be too many cases where black women are having a decrease in their maternal/mortality rate, simply because their doctors don’t believe that they are in need of more medical attention or they chose to disregard their symptoms or side effects.