Implications of systemic racism in Emergency Medical Services: On prehospital bias and complicity

Publications Category : Emergency Medicine

Author(s): Christian Angelo Ventura, Edward Eliseus Denton, Benjamin R Asack

Project Description : Public health research has increasingly proven racial disparities within emergency medicine, as exemplified by the fallibility of pulse oximeters resulting in unreliable detection of respiratory compromise, to implicitly biased clinical perception of pain in Black and Brown patients. 1 There is a lack of literature detailing the complicity of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) clinicians who sit among a nation with an inequitable healthcare system. In this piece, we aim to shed light on how disparities in prehospital emergency medical care harm patients of color. Informed by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) accounts, our experiences as prehospital clinicians, and available literature, we discuss pressing concerns with actionable implications.