African-American doctor details racial treatment disparities in viral video before dying of COVID
Theresa Braine 51 mins ago
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African-American doctor details racial treatment disparities in viral video before dying of COVID
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© Facebook Dr. Susan Moore
An African-American doctor who died of coronavirus left a message about racial disparity not just when it comes to how COVID-19 affects people of color but also about medical attitudes.
Dr. Susan Moore experienced the disparities in treatment from both angles, and did not hold back in a video she posted to Facebook.
“Those people were trying to kill me,” she said of Indiana University North Hospital, where she had at first been treated for her severe case of COVID. “Clearly everyone has to agree they discharged me way too soon.”
While there, she claimed, she had asked for pain relief, which a white doctor refused to give.
“I was crushed,” Moore said in her video, saying of the doctor, “he made me feel like I was a drug addict. And he knew I was a physician. I don’t take narcotics. I was hurting.”
She detailed waiting hours for a CT scan that would prove her condition had worsened – after which she was finally given pain meds and Remdesivir, one of the drugs approved for emergency use by the FDA.
“All I can do is cry, I was in so much pain,” she wrote.
The doctor “did not even listen to my lungs,” she said. “He didn’t touch me in any way. He performed no physical exam. I told him, you cannot tell me how I feel.”
Moore wanted a transfer, but she got sent home instead.
Indiana University Hospital defended its actions.
“IU North respects and upholds patient privacy and cannot comment on a specific patient, their medical history or conditions,” an IU spokesperson told
People. “As an organization committed to equity and reducing racial disparities in healthcare, we take accusations of discrimination very seriously and investigate every allegation.”
Numerous studies have shown that the medical establishment as a whole tends to underestimate Black people’s assessment of their own pain, as
The Washington Post reported during the summer.
Moreover, the hospital said, “Treatment options are often agreed upon and reviewed by medical experts from a variety of specialties, and we stand by the commitment and expertise of our caregivers and the quality of care delivered to our patients every day.”
Less than 12 hours after being discharged, Moore was back in the hospital – this time Ascencion-St. Vincent in Carmel, Indiana, the
Indianapolis Star reported. Her fever had spiked, and her blood pressure plummeted. There, she got proper treatment, she said.
“They are now treating me for a bacterial pneumonia as well as Covid pneumonia,” Moore said in her video. “I am getting very compassionate care. They are offering me pain medicine.”
It was in sharp contrast to how she’d been treated at IU, she said.
“This is how Black people get killed, when you send them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Moore said. “I put forth, and I maintain, if I was white, I wouldn’t have [had] to go through that.”
She died on Sunday, leaving behind two elderly parents afflicted with dementia, and a 19-year-old son who is caring for them, according to the Indianapolis Star.
.