Opinion

Umbereen S. Nehal: In colonizer regimes, indigenous doctors were not allowed credentials, replaced with “colonizing women.”

Photo from Umbereen S. Nehal/Linkedin

Aug 22, 2023, 09:25

Umbereen S. Nehal: In colonizer regimes, indigenous doctors were not allowed credentials, replaced with “colonizing women.”

Umbereen S. Nehal, the Founder of HER Heard, and a Sloan Fellows MBA program candidate, stated the following on Linkedin:

“In colonizer regimes, indigenous doctors were not allowed credentials, replaced with “colonizing women” (able to get roles in colonized lands they could not get in own countries). https://lnkd.in/ej3ANHUq
Fights over who can use a title have been happening for centuries. This is just the newest episode of it.

As a woman physician whose parents were born under a colonial regime, I do value my credentials because there was a time others, outsiders in the land of my ancestors, would have not allowed me to be a medical doctor. This happened in Ireland too: https://lnkd.in/e4H_tkSN

Unlike those “colonizing women” of the past, am committed to patient autonomy and not controlling others’ bodies. It is a personal mission of mine to make “doctor” more trustworthy than others who had that title.

This kind of history of blocking access makes the policy fight below messy.

Who speaks for the patient? I always am struck, in these contentious spaces, by patients being a political football in all this…while various professions vie for turf, titles, billing, etc.
I value nurses, pharmacists, doulas, community health workers, engineers, MBAs. It is important to have team-based care and multiple perspectives. DOs are also different from MDs in ways that enrich. There was a time DOs were “not real doctors.”

“Made in America” has been a slogan used for why not to hire a foreign-trained physician & instead hire a non-physicians (activating xenophobia very effectively).
Hospitals were segregated until 1964. Some CEOs & board members of today were born in that era. Mindsets have not changed and outcomes show disparities. In healthcare, POC are in spaces not built for us. I used to not pay attention to this wordsmithing and did not care about “provider” term…

…until I understood the business incentive of treating workers like expendable & interchangeable cogs and reducing staffing costs. Private equity does this: https://lnkd.in/eQV4qeg6

After replacing doctors, other provider types soon become themselves burnt out and start to petition management. So who will be the next replacement? (Likely, AI) This is a revolving door driven by bad management. Driving down to lowest cost is no different in any industry. AI is used to reduce work force costs and numbers. Everyone wants lower operating costs.

Managing humans is hard. Managing highly educated and opinionated humans is especially hard.

Thing is, hospitals also ignore or fight transparency on pricing that patients deserve to have. https://lnkd.in/e9UKuiZC
Now, am paying attention to who is pushing this narrative and why.

My conclusion: opacity and confusion never serve the patient. As a result, am for better transparency, not confusion, on credentials.

Let patients understand their options, then decide.

Source: Umbereen S. Nehal/LinkedIn