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Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford was on an Indianapolis Delta flight in Boston on Tuesday when she noticed the woman next to her showing signs of distress. Dr. Stanford did what she was trained to do in over a decade of experience as a physician: she began to help her.
But Dr. 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. Dr. Stanford said yes and, without being asked, she took out her doctor's license, which says she is a physician registered in Massachusetts and wears the letters "M.D." after her name.
"I know I do not watch the game," said Dr. 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 Dr. Stanford continued to try 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 Dr. 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 take away the medical license of someone else?", Replied Dr. Stanford.
Dr. Stanford, who practices obesity medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and is an instructor from Harvard Medical School, spoke with the local media and wrote about the meeting on social media accounts this week, raise questions about the implicit biases against black professionals.
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Dr. Stanford, a graduate of the Medical College of Georgia in 2007, said his skepticism toward health professionals and race was an issue. remove the trays or 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."
Dr. 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 Dr. Stanford on Wednesday and said the investigation was ongoing, according to the email 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 says that he is a doctor, a medical assistant, a nurse, a paramedic or a paramedic emergency technician.
Mr. Black said the flight attendants working on Dr. Stanford's flight, flight 5935, were employed by Republic Airline, a Delta Connection partner, on Tuesday.
"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 that occurred in October 2016, when a Houston black doctor, Dr. Tamika Cross, offered to treat a sick patient on a Delta flight from Detroit to Minneapolis.
Dr. 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 required an "accreditation" and confirmation that she was "real" doctor, nurse or medical staff member. .
Dr. 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, Dr. Cross said that 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 Dr. Cross.
Dr. Stanford confided that she was carrying a wallet-sized version of her medical license since she had read what had happened to Dr. Cross in 2016. The experience of Dr. Cross has was widely shared online by his colleagues to highlight offensive assumptions about diversity in the medical field.
The 2016 hashtag #WhatADoctorLooksLike, inspired by Dr. Cross's case, was resurrected this week to raise awareness of the doubts expressed by many black health professionals.
Dr. Stanford, in a message posted on her Twitter account to Delta, said she was "very disappointed that your diversity policy" did not lead to any changes.
Among those who commented online after the publication of Dr. Stanford's essay, Dr. Cross, wrote to Delta on Facebook: "In 2016, you also did not think I looked like a doctor. Hundreds of thousands of us across the country and even in other countries are gathered to show you what we look like an actor, but we stand JUST 2 years later and your employees have not learned.
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