Intentions vs. Experiences: Opening the Door to Fundamental Conversations About Diversity, Intersectionality, and Race
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THE LEARNER'S VOICE
Intentions vs. Experiences: Opening the Door to Fundamental Conversations About Diversity, Intersectionality, and Race José M. Flores 1 & Zheala Qayyum 2 Received: 17 March 2020 / Revised: 25 June 2020 / Accepted: 8 September 2020 # Academic Psychiatry 2020
This Learner’s Voice piece describes several encounters between an attending psychiatrist (ZQ) and a psychiatry resident (JF) as they explored the intricacies related to the dynamic definition of the term diversity. The authors have used the terms “Latinx” and “Hispanic” interchangeably in this piece, but we acknowledge that discussions about racial or ethnic identity are fluid and evolving. We also recognize the problematic labeling of American communities from different parts of South/Central/North America, the Caribbean and other parts of the world. There are important subgroups who may not identify with these terms yet may feel culturally connected to the communities or ethnicities discussed in this piece.
Faculty’s Viewpoint I (ZQ) was drowning in the chaos of the early afternoon on the adolescent inpatient psychiatry unit. Two social workers were trying to talk to me about the pending discharges while the charge nurse was trying to get my attention about a script that one of the parents wanted added to the discharge medications. In the midst of all this, a first-year psychiatry resident, brimming with enthusiasm and having just admitted a new patient on the unit, came by to check in. The resident presented the case and eagerly expressed that he would like to follow the patient. I made a mental note to remind myself to send the residency training directors a note of gratitude for somehow selecting trainees that were a joy to teach, and this young intern too was all about learning. It made my job easier. Given his own Ecuadorian background, our resident had expressed a lot of interest in following patients with Latin American heritage. There were a few adolescents with * Zheala Qayyum [email protected] 1
Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
2
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
significant developmental trauma and multiple psychosocial stressors in the unit, even one from Ecuador that we made sure the intern was able to add to his caseload. This new patient too was quite similar. Since it was the resident’s last week on the rotation, somehow, I blurted, “Sure, this would be a good case to see, but I think it would be better to have more diversity in the patients you follow.”
Learner’s Viewpoint I (JF) was drowning in the chaos of that early afternoon on the adolescent inpatient psychiatry unit. It was my first month on the child and adolescent psychiatry wards; to say that I was brimming with enthusiasm is to put it mildly. At that moment in my training, everything was new—every case, every demographic, every treatment, and every diagnosis. I am an Ecuadorian American physician who immigrated to the USA as a young child. I was born in the city of Loja, but it was in the multicultural city of
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