Diversity in Medical Education?

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I read this paper published by a medical student about the lack of education provided at her medical school in identifying skin diseases in people with darker skin tones, and specifically how she was not taught how to identify the bulls-eye rash in Lyme's disease in darker skin tones where it would not be as visible. She mentioned that her professor had acknowledged that it would be more difficult to identify, but sort of brushed it off (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1915891). I saw this other article about a medical student in the UK who addressed a similar issue and actually recently published a book on how to identify symptoms in darker skin tones. I never really considered this before because whenever I hear about cultural competency in medicine it seems like the conversation is always "we need more black/brown physicians because patients of that group will more likely trust them" or something to that extent, but it seems like another aspect is that they are more likely to advocate for diversity in medical education (e.g. advocating for photos that doesn't just depict a skin condition in one skin tone, but a range of skin tones). I don't know if this is the right forum to ask this, but I'm wondering if medical schools in the U.S. are getting better about this? Is the medical education generally representative of a diverse population, or does this really depend on the school you go to?

 

[deleted480308]

Mine made attempts to show darker skin tones as well for diseases but >90% of pics were lighter toned

 

[Goro]

I read this paper published by a medical student about the lack of education provided at her medical school in identifying skin diseases in people with darker skin tones, and specifically how she was not taught how to identify the bulls-eye rash in Lyme's disease in darker skin tones where it would not be as visible. She mentioned that her professor had acknowledged that it would be more difficult to identify, but sort of brushed it off (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1915891). I saw this other article about a medical student in the UK who addressed a similar issue and actually recently published a book on how to identify symptoms in darker skin tones. I never really considered this before because whenever I hear about cultural competency in medicine it seems like the conversation is always "we need more black/brown physicians because patients of that group will more likely trust them" or something to that extent, but it seems like another aspect is that they are more likely to advocate for diversity in medical education (e.g. advocating for photos that doesn't just depict a skin condition in one skin tone, but a range of skin tones). I don't know if this is the right forum to ask this, but I'm wondering if medical schools in the U.S. are getting better about this? Is the medical education generally representative of a diverse population, or does this really depend on the school you go to?

Mine is!

This seems to be a growing trend in medical education.