RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 White supremacy culture and the assimilation trauma of medical training: ungaslighting the physician burnout discourse
JF Medical Humanities
JO J Med Humanit
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 142
OP 146
DO 10.1136/medhum-2022-012398
VO 49
IS 1
A1 Rupinder K Legha
A1 Nathalie N Martinek
YR 2023
UL http://mh.bmj.com/content/49/1/142.abstract
AB The physician burnout discourse emphasises organisational challenges and personal well-being as primary points of intervention. However, these foci have minimally impacted this worsening public health crisis by failing to address the primary sources of harm: oppression. Organised medicine’s whiteness, developed and sustained since the nineteenth century, has moulded training and clinical practice, favouring those who embody its oppressive ideals while punishing those who do not. Here, we reframe physician burnout as the trauma resulting from the forced assimilation into whiteness and the white supremacy culture embedded in medical training’s hidden curriculum. We argue that ‘ungaslighting’ the physician burnout discourse requires exposing the history giving rise to medicine’s whiteness and related white supremacy culture, rejecting discourses obscuring their harm, and using bold and radical frameworks to reimagine and transform medical training and practice into a reflective, healing process.