Implicit Bias: Disability and Being a Doctor

The graphic is from a wonderful study done by Tessa E. S. Charlesworth at the Department of Psychology, Harvard University. I first saw it in Scientific American, April 2019, magazine on page 12. While I read a lot about a wide variety of subjects, this graph represented something I felt and experienced over the past 10 years in my own life as a disabled physician attempting to create and build a second career in life. Bias. When you say your are disabled, other humans react, but less explicitly than 10 years ago.

Why is this important to the young doctors I reach out to and educate and advocate for and to have great individual disability insurance?

You have been trained to be tougher and more resilient than the rest of society AND with good reason! They depend on you to be able to work even if hurt, tired, sick or not at 100%. Society's expectations AND that of your own colleagues and mentors is to "toughen up" and work through it. When faced with an illness or injury that robs you of the capacity to perform the material and substantial duties of clinical medical practice... you become what you have implicit bias towards... only it's multiplied by the fact you are a doctor, a healer.

Society is slowly decreasing our explicit biases about many issues: sexuality, weight, race, age, skin tone and disability BUT when looking at implicit bias, especially for disability, it remains unchanged over the past 10 years. That's what I felt and so seeing it in graphically form was poignant.

What can you do about it in Residency today or if you just Matched as a 4th Year medical student? Reach out and learn one-on-one and doctor-to-doctor about how to properly protect that income you have earned through the sacrifice of your time, energy and resources. Proper high quality individual disability insurance do not just happen unless you are just lucky.

If you ever end up with a permanent disability, like I did, just 11 years into clinical practice; I assure you you will have to come to grips with your own unconscious implicit biases towards the word disability and the fact you are now a disabled person. Take this opportunity while you are as young and healthy as you are ever going to be to protect your financial life.

Why did I write this? I saw the graphic in Scientific American while my son was showing me the article on Mind Reading and Brain-Machine Interfaces. He's 15 and despite both parents in medicine still wants to be a Cybernetic Neurosurgeon! Last week we were discussing Dr. Hugh Herr at MIT who is making startling advances in interactive and reactive prosthetics. This week, we are looking at brain-machine interfaces that could one day run entire exoskeletons! Part of the reason he wants to be a doctor is NOT my wife and myself - we have been stressed and burned out multiple times and most doctor-doctor couples children run away from medical careers, not towards them.

He wants to be a doctor, partially, because of all the young physicians I have as clients. He's met some and has said if they become disabled when I'm a doctor [in 20 years!] they will be able to go back to work, and if not, they'll have money for their families because of you, dad.

I assure you, having the resources to live for you and your family, even if you lose the capability of doing the career you love and trained for in clinical medicine, trumps all biases! Struggling, fighting and watching what you dreamed of fade away because you did not have quality individual disability insurance is a a nightmare I wish for every doctor I work with to never ever have to experience.

For you, future doctors, even my own son, and whatever a cybernetic neurosurgeon is going to be in 2037. Do not procrastinate on this any longer. Get your individual disability insurance squared away today. A review of what you currently have is free for every physician, dentist or medical professional in the USA.

~Chris

Dr. Christopher Yerington

Columbus, Ohio

Bio: Retired from clinical anesthesiology by a disability in 2010, Dr. Yerington has turned his love of teaching and service to others to his family, medical colleagues and community. He speaks, writes and educates medical groups and residency programs about the importance of great disability and life insurance, basic physician-financial literacy and work-life balance. Chris also consoles and counsels young doctors on stress, burnout and physician-suicide. Having attended law and business schools, Chris is a perpetual student of human life, a scientist and an optimistic futurist at heart.