[Editor’s note: This piece originally appeared as a comment in response to Uché Blackstock’s “Medical Schools Must Continue to Teach Students About Structural Barriers to Care” in STAT. That article is available here.]
Uché Blackstock’s piece hinges on a narrow premise: that unless physicians are formally trained in matters of “equity,” they will overlook the real-world constraints their patients face. She therefore laments the Liaison Committee on Medical Education’s decision to drop its requirement that medical schools teach about equity—i.e., the non-medical social and political realities that may affect patients’ lives.
Yet Blackstock fails to account for two basic truths. First, clinicians have long done the listening she wants, without being subjected to inherently politicized equity-based training. Inquisitiveness about a patient’s unique circumstances has always been key to medicine. For generations, physicians have been taught to take a social history. Good doctors listen, adapt plans pragmatically, and focus on what they are uniquely trained to do: assess, diagnosis, and treat the patient before them. Empathy emerges from clinical competence, not ideological instruction that supplants scientific rigor.
Read the full piece at STAT.
