A black doctor is interrogated while she intervenes on a Delta flight

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Fatima Cody Stanford was on a Delta flight from Indianapolis to Boston on Tuesday when she noticed the woman next to her showing signs of distress. So, Stanford did what she had been trained for over ten years of experience as a doctor: she began to help her.

But Stanford, who is black, said that she had just started helping the passenger when a flight attendant approached her and asked her if she was a doctor. Stanford said yes and, without being asked, she released her medical license, which states that she is a registered physician in Massachusetts and that she carries the letters "MD" after his name.

"I know I do not watch the game," said Stanford, 39, during an interview Thursday. "So, I'm just wearing it with my driver's license at all times."

The flight attendant glanced at it and walked away, she said. While Stanford was still trying to calm the passenger, another flight attendant approached and asked to see the license. She too looked at her and walked away. The two flight attendants came back together and began another round of questions.

"Are you a chief doctor?" Asked one of them. When Stanford said that she did not understand the question, the flight attendant asked, "Are you really a M.D.?"

Then the second flight attendant asked, "Is this your license?" When the doctor asked what she meant, she repeated the question. "Why should I carry someone else 's medical license?" Stanford replied.

Stanford, who practices obesity medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and is an instructor at Harvard Medical School, has been carrying with her the wallet version of her medical license since 2016, when she became aware of it. a black doctor who had been invited to show his credentials. help a sick passenger on a Delta flight. Stanford spoke with local media and wrote about the meeting that took place this week on social media, reviving questions on prejudice and racism against black professionals.

Stanford, a graduate of the Medical College of Georgia in 2007, said she had often spoken to colleagues of color, that they had exchanged stories that they had been mistaken for support staff, or had wipe the damage in the emergency room.

"This is something that the medical community has understood as a reality," she said. "When you search for a doctor on Google, most of the images that appear are those of a white man."

"There are other people who look like me," she added. "And I should not be questioned about something that I've been working on all my life."

Stanford stated that she had not been challenged for the rest of the two-hour flight. While they were coming down, she said, an employee told her that they would no longer need to check her license because "it looks like you managed to manage everything."

She interpreted the meeting as biased because of the persistence of wondering if she was a doctor even after providing the evidence. "It never stopped," she said. "I just could not understand why we had this discussion."

Delta apologized to Stanford on Wednesday and said the investigation was ongoing, according to the mail that she would have sent him.

Anthony Black, a spokesman for Delta, said Thursday that the airline had changed its policy on medical degrees in 2016 to say that flight attendants are not required to check the diplomas of someone who claims to be a doctor, medical assistant, nurse or paramedic or emergency technician.

Black said flight attendants working on Stanford Flight 5935 were employed by Republic Airline, a Delta Connection partner.

"In the future, we are following up with our connection carrier partner to ensure that their employees understand and apply the policy consistently," he said in an email.

Jon Austin, a spokesman for Republic, said in an email Thursday that the airline was working with Delta to make sure its employees are enforcing such policies. "We thank Dr. Stanford for his medical assistance on Flight 5935 and we regret any misunderstanding that occurred during his exchange with our flight crew."

The change in Delta's policy was caused by an incident in October 2016, when a Houston black doctor, Dr. Tamika Cross, offered to treat a sick patient during a Delta flight between Detroit and Minneapolis.

Cross, who did not have her medical permit with her, told The New York Times in 2016 that, when she volunteered to help, an air hostess had demanded an "accreditation" and confirmation that she was a doctor, a nurse or a "real" medical staff.

Cross said that she had already come across assumptions that, being a black woman, she was not a doctor. "I think minorities in general, especially in my field of practice – I feel that they are always questioned and always supposed to be the nurse or the nurse help or here in the cleaning team or auxiliary staff, "she said.

On Thursday, Cross said little has changed since this year, even after completing residency training.

Now at Memorial Hermann Pearland Hospital in Pearland, Texas, with regular patients, she is still sometimes confused with support staff.

"I think it will be just a battle of a lifetime," said Cross.

Stanford participated with Cross in a panel on sex and prejudice in medicine on Oct. 19, at a conference sponsored by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Less than two weeks later, Stanford "lived her story from start to finish," she said.

The experiences of both physicians have been widely shared online by colleagues to highlight offensive assumptions about diversity in the medical field. The hashtag 2016 #WhatADoctorLooksLikeinspired by the case of Cross, was resurrected this week to raise awareness of the doubts of many black health professionals.

Stanford, in a message on her Twitter account directed to Delta, said she was "very disappointed that your diversity policy" did not lead to any changes.

And Cross is addressed to the airline on Facebook. "In 2016, you did not think I looked like a doctor, either," she wrote. "Hundreds of thousands of us across the country and even in other countries come together to show you what we look like, but here we stand JUST 2 years later and your employees do not have learned.