U of T medical student on how underprivilege made her a better doctor
Published: August 25, 2017
When she started medical school, Stephanie Y. Zhou says she hid her identity to feel included. Unlike most of her fellow students, Zhou grew up in poverty, living at homeless shelters and subsidized housing, relying on food banks and church donation bins.
“I studied hard and worked two part-time jobs during university to fund my medical school applications, but throughout the whole process, it was clear that one had to come from privilege to easily apply and assimilate into the medical culture," Zhou, a student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, writes in an essay for the JAMA Network that was reprinted in the Toronto Star.
That culture, she writes, involves a disproportionate number of students from families of higher socioeconomic class who “come prepared with the social and cultural capital to navigate the medical school environment. Upon acceptance, I became a part of this new culture. Not wanting to be different, I hid my identity to feel included.”
But that changed when she left the classroom and saw patients who share her socioeconomic background. “I saw myself and the experiences of my family in the lives of these patients, and I realized that I did fit into medicine – I fit in with my patients,” she writes.
“To come from this background grants a different, more subtle form of privilege beyond that of wealth and social networks. I call it an 'empathic privilege' that allows one to be more cognizant of the social determinants of health that patients often leave unspoken when seeking medical care."
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