Meet the Medical Student Challenging Racial Bias with TikTok

If you don't feel heard at the doctor's office, there are some things you can do.

I started my TikTok because I had a lot of time to think about what was happening in the world when I was a medical student. There are black lives that matter. George Floyd was protesting. There were stories about people being hunted down and killed.

He was just as old as I was.

Seeing myself being a Black medical student in a field where less than 5% of all physicians are Black, I wondered what I could do to use my voice in a different way to talk about these issues.

I wanted to do something.

I was the first black medical student. I feel like I've asked questions that other students wouldn't have asked in my classroom.

I decided to make TikToks about things I didn't know in school.

If you can, go in with another person. Number two is to go in with someone else if you can. Call someone in if you can't. The conversation could be recorded later.

I'm namedJoel Bervell.

Right now, I'm looking at my calendar. Whenever I have an idea, I try to put it down so I remember it.

My grandparents were my main caretakers when my parents were away. She spoke no English at all.

She went back to West Africa when I was in middle school. She contracted Malaria while at the hospital.

She didn't know that she was supposed to bring her own tubing and IVs when she was in the hospital.

Delays in care resulted in her death.

I saw health disparity for the first time that day. There's a lot of research coming out in the medical field, but it's hard to access because of the paywalls.

Sometimes you can't understand what the study is saying if you don't have access to that.

My job is to take complex studies and put them into 30 to 60 second videos where people can advocate for themselves in the doctor's office. It's the beginning.

I made one of the first Tiktoks with a pulse oximeter in it.

All skin tones are treated differently by pulse oximetry. The devices that measure your blood, oxygen saturation level are on your finger.

There is a video that went viral after it was shown that pulse oximeters don't work as well in darker skinned people.

They said that they had never heard of it before.

Someone said that my TikTok might have saved their life.

I've exposed things that we should have been taught in medical school but haven't been learning.

Elena is a person. The average incoming medical student is 10 years older than her.

The man lived with a hole in his head because of a terrifying government radiation experiment when he was five years old.

It's time to return to hidden medical history. There is a little known story about a man.

In my videos, I talk about the importance of history in understanding the medical system. Communities of color have been left out of the mix for too long.

Everyone has biases that are going to affect how they look at a patient or see someone differently.

Understanding biases is going to be a challenge.

All the way back. The medical system has a part to play in this.

Slaves would have to be whipped in order to be cured of trichotillomania.

Some people still think that Black patients don't feel as much pain or that they have less nerve endings.

A recent study was done. More than half of the respondents endorsed at least one false belief about black patients.

There is a lack of Black medical students and Black doctors. History is related to it. It's related to things. Right now, we have access to that.

There is a report called the Flexner report. There was a report done in 1910. Abraham Flexner was commissioned by the American Medical Association to look at how the medical schools in the US were run.

Almost all of the schools that trained women and minorities were shut down.

For more than 50 years you didn't have doctors being trained that were women or minorities.

The Civil Rights Act requires that medical schools accept people who are not white.

Talking about where medicine is practiced has been short-lived. We don't give priority to the public health work that is being done.

We need to do a better job of reacting to public health emergencies like COVID and monkeypox, if we think about it.

We will talk later.

Have a great day in school.

Rachel Bervell is going to.

The medical system costs a lot. It is a lot of money to attend medical school. Medical students spend thousands of dollars to apply to medical school, but they don't know if they'll be accepted.

A generation of people are not able to go into medicine because they can't afford it.

It's not possible to find mentors to get you there. I've had a lot of conversations with friends who should be doctors, but they weren't told that they weren't good enough. I have had those experiences as well. If it wasn't for mentors who spoke to me, I wouldn't be here right now.

Amiethab A. Aiyer: "Where are you?" I think I'm at some point in October.

Is it a normal day? I work a lot. I have many projects that I'm working on. I try to figure out what's the best way to make information accessible.

Right now, I'm working with the White House. I'm working with the World Health Organization to get the word out about online misinformation.

I've worked with the surgeon general. I got to make a video with a doctor.

Right now, I'm working on a TV show.

There is an incredible movement for the next generation to rethink what medicine is.

Ensuring that communities that haven't been talked about are included in the curriculum is part of that. I think they are getting more varied. I believe that we're talking about race-based medicine and why we use it, as well as the flaws of it. Medical devices can read and read correctly on different skin tones.

We're talking about artificial intelligence and how it can be used to treat people in different ways.

Some people will say that I'm a change maker, but I think education is the most important thing in my life. I like to teach. Sharing knowledge is something I enjoy doing. I'm trying to take things that have fascinated me and give them to people so they can use them to improve their own health.

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