I Don’t Need To Be Cured; I Need To Be Treated With Respect | Lorna Rodriguez-Rodriguez, MD PhD
It was my third year of medical school, and I was so proud to have secured an appointment for my mother with one of my professors – a world-renowned allergist. My mom had suffered for years with an intermittent undiagnosed allergy that caused painful blisters on her hands and arms, and I was convinced that we were finally one step closer to finding a cure.
But as we were leaving the doctor’s office, my mother was subdued. When she finally spoke, she surprised me by saying, “I’m going back to my own doctor tomorrow. I don’t feel this doctor took me or my issues seriously.” I was surprised, to say the least, and I reminded her he was one of the foremost experts in allergies. She replied, “Lorna, I don’t need to be cured. I need to be treated with respect.”
What she said that day has shaped the way I’ve practiced medicine – it made me a better doctor. That experience taught me the importance of treating my patients as she demanded to be treated, not just with my expertise, but with my compassion and an understanding of their circumstances.
As a woman, as a person of color, as a Puerto Rican, and as a lesbian – I know that compassion and understanding from those in the medical world for those like me has not been our history. Each of my communities is among the underserved, overlooked, and often ignored, while at the same time statistics show we face a higher incidence of fatal cancers. That’s part of what drove me to get my medical degree and become an gynecologic oncologist and why I encourage others from my communities to forge their own paths to become medical professionals.
I don’t want to imply that if we don’t share the same ethnic background, the same gender, or the same sexual orientation, we are not equipped to take care of a patient. Instead, I want to emphasize that by not being inclusive in college education, medical school education, all the way to gyn oncology training, we are not creating a medical community that is representative of the patients that we treat.
Our patients don’t just want to feel heard and understood, they also want choices in their doctors, and they want to have their communities and experiences represented at the table. This means equal representation in clinical trials, equal research dollars for all types of illnesses and medical conditions, and equal access to healthcare for every community. We have a long way to go in each of these arenas and I would call on all of those reading this article to think about what role they can play in pushing for these changes.
More personally, while my long-term focus is on curing ovarian cancer, recently my research has centered around the impact of ancestry, racial and ethnic differences in clinical outcomes among patients receiving treatment for cancer. The importance of this type of research is just starting to be recognized by a few, and I suspect that if it weren’t for my background, I wouldn’t have focused on this either.
Our goal is to develop more specific treatment plans by understanding a patient’s DNA as well as the many ways their culture might affect not just how and where they live and what they eat but also how they respond to different treatments. If others are working in this area, I hope they’ll reach out to me.
Brené Brown, in her recent book Atlas of the Heart, reminds us that “We need to dispel the myth that empathy is ‘walking in someone else’s shoes.’ Rather than walking in your shoes, I need to learn how to listen to the story you tell about what it’s like in your shoes and believe you even when it doesn’t match my experiences.” As medical professionals, we all have the opportunity to listen and believe our patients (as well as their families, our staff and our colleagues), just as my mother hoped for all those years ago. To honor her legacy and extend the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month throughout the year, let us all try to do more of that every day.
Lorna Rodriguez-Rodriguez, MD, PhD is the Vice-Chair of Surgery and Professor of Gynecologic Oncology, a member of the Executive Leadership Team and the DE and I Council at City of Hope in Duarte, CA.