I have a hypothetical situation for you.
For my purposes this incident happens in the United States.
You are sick and need a doctor, not just any doctor you need a surgeon for a difficult procedure. If you don't get the procedure you will die. The hospital has 5 doctors that they say are qualified to preform your surgery. To make matters worse this is an emergency and you don't have time to research the skill set of each of the candidates. You do however get 5 min with each of them for a pre-surgery consultation.
All five men seem very nice and are personable. They all claim to have done the procedure before but all of them are new graduates and have only been out of school a short time. The price of the surgery will be the same no matter who preforms it. All five men have answered your pre-surgery questions word for word the same way.
One doctor is Asian.
One is Jewish.
One is a nondescript White guy.
One is Black.
One is Hispanic.
Which one do you pick and why?
Note, if you don't answer in the comments its because you are a racist and your non-answer is proof that you are a hater.
Incidentally each possible choice involves prejudice, does that mean your choice is also racist?
Since they all answer each question in the exact same way, I ask this question:
ReplyDeleteWhich of the other doctors is the best of the four?
Four doctors will all answer with the name of the best doctor, and the fifth one (the best) will answer with the second best.
Then I go with the best one, no matter which one it is.
No matter what I pick I am a racist, so I pick the white guy, because their requirements to get a spot in med school are much higher than the others. So he is most likely smarter going in I'll play the odds.
ReplyDeleteAlso the odds of the doctor not caring about me raise with the black guy, and the Asians hate Red Necks, so those two are out, not because of how I feel about them but the slim odds of how they may feel about me. In second place would be the Jew and third would be the Hispanic.
I have an actual real problem very similar to your example about upcoming surgery, and I would swear that (white guy) that is going to do it is either really aspie or he don't like me at all and I am begining to suspect the latter. I am going in for a second opinion and hope they don't figure out what I am thinking.
ReplyDeleteI have them all draw straws, and then pick the black one anyway to offset previous racism, but I tell them all that the black man won the straw pick so they don't feel bad.
ReplyDeleteCause I'm not racist.
It is hard to decide only because I am tending to agree with WB and Outlaw both.
ReplyDeleteGiven the AA preferences issues, the white guy is probably the best one to choose because he had to be crazy good to get into med school in the quota culture we have now.
But I like WB's idea of asking each guy who they think is the best, and go from there.
Did you guys ever see a show called Mystery Diagnosis? When I had cable, I used to watch that show with the same fascination as I would watch a multi car pileup happen in slow mo on the freeway.
The one constant on that show is that the insurance industry is killing the medical profession faster than anything else, because no matter what happens, the doctor gets paid anyway, so he has no incentive to diagnose the problem if it doesn't immediately show itself to the doctor.
So they wound up getting "old school guy", pre-insurance, pre-AA, pre everything PC and he would solve the case. Sometimes it just involved, believe it or not, smelling the patient in some way. New doctors don't do that.
When you have no incentive to diagnose because you get paid anyway, why work hard? Kicking the can down the road to the next doctor is always a lot easier.
My approach would be different. I would want to find the oldest/longest working nurse on the floor and get her alone to ask her which doctor she would have do the surgery. I would feel better about the decision making process if I could find a couple of experienced nurses who agreed which doctor was best.
ReplyDeleteIf that wasn't possible I'd evaluate the accents and education backgrounds if possible. A first generation Asian that came to the US to study medicine is probably a smart guy. I happen to share most of Outlaw's thought process, except I would assume that the Asian, the Jew and the White guy all had to be competitive in terms of performance to get to be doctors. So any of the three would probably be OK if my life was on the line.
Here is the irony in this exercise. All 5 doctors have a theoretically equal chance of being "the best" doctor. When it comes down to knowing which one is the best and we have limited time and resources to make our decision we use the information available. Everything that may be a positive for the Asian guy doesn't seem to apply to the Hispanic guy. The Black guy could be a crazy good surgeon with 179 IQ. The odds are against it.
Affirmative action programs cause people who otherwise couldn't get into a program to have access on a non-competitive basis. That doesn't mean that the doctor standing in front of you is less competent, but there is a chance. When your life is on the line, you might not want to take that chance. What is more racist, using race to achieve a specific out come, like minorities getting into medical school, or knowing that system exists and trying to avoid suffering the consequences?
Did you guys ever see a show called Mystery Diagnosis?
ReplyDeleteI never saw the show, but I don't watch TV very often.
Bunch of raciss
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, you would think that as the mom of an RN, I would have thought of the "ask the help who is the best" scenario myself.
ReplyDeleteYou are exactly right by the way. My daughter says that she and her fellow nursing staff can tell you a lot about the doctors they work with. Hint: Sometimes the doctor with the worst personality can actually be the best doctor to have. It is equally important to see which hospital(if you have the choice) has the best nursing staff. The doctors pop in once a day to check the patient, but it is the nurses who have the most contact with your family member.
Believe it or not, there are actually far more nurses imported from out of the Country, like the Philippines, than there are problems with doctors from other Countries. Or so my daughter tells me. I guess there is a real shortage of RN nurses in this Country right now.
As the population grows older there will be an increased need for nursing care. It's a good field for a female who wants a career.
ReplyDelete