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Latinas in Medical Careers
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When Deanna Shea rolls out of bed at 5 a.m., she knows she's in for a long
day. A 12- to 13-hour long day, to be
exact.
Shea is a registered nurse specializing in
cardiology. A typical day for her starts well before dawn and stretches deep into the
evening. Over the next dozen or so hours she'll monitor the vital
signs, blood sugar levels, health and general
well-being of at least five
patients. She'll counsel and care for
them, discussing everything from medication and nutrition to pain management and
recovery. It's a highly demanding
job, and one that can be unnervingly
hectic. Their lives are in her
hands. "There's definitely a stress
level," she says. "Some days you're just trying to get as much done as you can."
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, Shea has a lot of opportunity in front of
her. The agency predicts there will be more than one million job openings for nurses by the time 2010 rolls
around. That's because of a severe nursing shortage right
now, and an increasing number of aging baby boomers in the
pipeline.
"Careers in nursing are
mobile. You can go anywhere because they are flexible," says Judith
Jones, the project manager for the Latino Nursing Career Opportunity Program at the Catholic University of
America. "It's not just about being
bedside. You can be in the
military, in a helicopter, in an emergency
room, at clinics out in the
community. You can be a school nurse. There are a lot of
possibilities." |
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The Latino nursing program at the Catholic University is headed by Carmen
Ramirez, who is both an R.N. and a
Ph.D. The program's very existence points to one rather disturbing trend in medical professions - a marked scarcity of Latinas. Jones says that only two percent of nurses nationwide are
Hispanic. At five percent, the numbers are only slightly better for
physicians. This is in strong contrast to the Hispanic population at
large, which constitutes 12 or 13 percent of the total
U.S. population. According to Dr. Nilda P.
Peragallo, the president of the National Association for Hispanic
Nurses, this contrast makes it crucial for more Latinos and Latinas to join the health
profession. "In order to provide culturally competent health care to our
population," Peragallo says,
"it is necessary to have a health professional population that more closely mirrors the current Hispanic
population."
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Dr.
Silvia Bicalho |
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The Latinas who do choose careers in medicine are paving the way for future
generations. Dr. Silvia Bicalho, a Brazilian-American
obstetrician/gynecologist, graduated from medical school in 1988 and has been practicing medicine ever
since. Currently, she's the vice chairman of the
OB/GYN department at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago.
None of Bicalho's days are ever the same. A typical morning can start out with anything from a hysterectomy or a
C-section to a special delivery that lasts for hours on
end. For Bicalho, one of the fringe benefits of being a physician is the
one-on-one contact she has with her patients.
"I get to be involved in the most beautiful part of their lives - giving
birth," she says. "It's an honor." Bicalho's
Latina identity enables her to better understand
certain cultural characteristics of her Latino
patients - for example, the importance that the
Hispanic community places on family. "When
you have surgery," she says, "it's not
uncommon for the Latin family to have the whole
family there." According to Bicalho, not all physicians understand this aspect of Latin
culture. "If you don't understand that, you're annoyed by
it. But if you do, you embrace it and you want them to be
there." |
In a hospital where English, Spanish and Korean are all primary
languages, Shea's Spanish fluency is also a hot
commodity. "I've found days where I'm the only one in a unit of 15 or 20 staffers who can speak
Spanish," Shea says. "Those days are
tough."
Cultural insight and Spanish fluency are just two of the reasons the National Hispanic Medical Association would like to see more Latinos involved in medicine.
"There is a shortage of Hispanic medical professionals in the
U.S.," says Elena Rios, M.D.
"There's a crisis in medical care." Rios is the President and CEO of the National Hispanic Medical
Association, a non-profit association based in Washington,
D.C. The organization's mission is to improve the health of Hispanics and other
under-served populations.
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A career in medicine is not all peaches and
cream. For example, Bicalho has struggled to balance the amount of time she spends in her career with the amount she spends at home with her
family. "Particularly after I had my
daughter, I felt that I was always torn between my time here at the hospital and my time with
her," says Bicalho.
Shea understands this struggle well.
"It's hard to decide what your highest priorities are
sometimes," she says. "Sometimes what is most important is not always what you most want to do." But Shea and Bicalho are quick to point out the benefits of working in medicine.
"You come into the hospital, and you're on call day and night for emergencies and
deliveries," says Bicalho.
"That can go from no calls to five or six babies a night. But I think that's what I like about this
job. It's always different. You have to be on your toes all the time." |
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Nurse
Deanna Shea (center)
with staff members at
the Good Samaritan
Hospital in Los Angeles |
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Shea agrees. "I'm the one who ultimately has to be there to walk patients through their physical and emotional
changes," Shea says. "It's
difficult, but you're ultimately making a difference for all the people that you
touch. That's really rewarding."
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Educational Media |
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For psychiatrist Linda
Austin, M.D., media plays a crucial role in the world of medicine and health
education. "There's no more powerful way to reach large segments of the population than through broadcast media," she
says. Every week for the past 14
years, Austin has reached out to listeners through her public radio talk show,
"What's On Your Mind?"
"Our slogan has always been
'education is the best
prescription,' and people can't take good care of their health unless they're educated about
health, unless they understand."
"What's On Your
Mind?" is a live, hour-long weekly program that combines an interview with a guest expert on the week's topic and a
call-in session where Austin and the expert field questions from
listeners. Though it allows Austin only a brief and relatively
non-intimate connection to her
callers, she chose psychiatry for the opposite
reason. "I liked the prolonged and intensive contact with
patients," she says. "I love the relationship I get to have with my psychiatric
patients."
Austin enjoys being able to divide her career between patient care and
education. "I would say half of my life has been about taking care of patients
myself, and the other half of my life professionally has been in fairly
large-scale public education
efforts."
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Dr.
Linda Austin |
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The Next Generation |
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Celine
Marquez |
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Celine Marquez just wrapped up her first year of medical school at Stanford
University. She overflows with enthusiasm for her future
profession. "I wanted to have a career that I could really have an impact [in], where going to work was something I
loved," she says. "In medicine you are experiencing life so powerfully
[that] you never lose your sense of wonderment about the
world. It is a privilege and a joy to have this opportunity to care for
people."
Specifically, Marquez is interested in reconstructive
surgery. "I am in love with reconstructive
surgery," she says.
"It is an amazing
field!" The opportunity to improve lives with
"this kind of soul lifting
work" appeals greatly to
Marquez, and she has big goals for her
future. After completing her residency in several
years, she hopes to open a free clinic catering to battered women and violent crime
victims.
In the meantime, Marquez is dedicated to mentoring and guiding other Latinas.
"I enjoy working with Latinas because they remain the most undereducated population in the United
States," she says.
"I find joy in offering encouragement and being a person that they can come to for
support." Hopefully Marquez's drive and success will rub off onto the young women she
mentors, encouraging them to set high goals for themselves too.
"Having navigated my academic path by
myself, I want to teach what I've
learned."
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Returning a Favor |
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Theresa Ramos,
M.D., chose her future career early
on, thanks to the support of a
teacher. "I was fortunate at a young age to get encouragement from one of my teachers - unlike other people of color, other Latinos - to go into the health field because she saw the potential in me." Ramos's Latino colleagues tend not to have had that sort of
experience. "Counselors,
mentors, tell Latino students
that, 'There's no way you're going to make
it.'"
Returning her teacher's favor, Ramos currently oversees the internal medicine residency program at the Illinois College of Medicine, a program of 50
residents, and acts as a mentor to a Latina student in her first year of medical
school. She hopes to let future Hipsanic doctors know that they are not
alone. "I realize the importance of
that, something that I did not
have. When I was growing up I don't even remember meeting a Latino
physician-even more so a Latina
physician. We're a rare
commodity." |
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Dr.
Theresa Ramos |
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Cultural Emergency |
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Dr.
Iris Reyes (right)
consults with a
patient |
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For her position as assistant medical director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania, Iris Reyes,
M.D., was required to be trained in all areas of medicine.
"I learned basically how to handle any situation that was presented to me," she
says. "I can go from delivering a baby one minute to taking care of someone with a gunshot wound or someone who's having an asthma attack or a heart
attack, and it's sort of the diversity in managing those situations that really is appealing to me."
Diversity is important to Reyes in other areas of medicine as
well. She acts as a mentor for minority
students, and she is on the medical school's admissions
committee. Reyes tries her best to make sure hers and other minority communities are represented in matriculating
classes. "I see it as my role on the committee to recruit
talented, underrepresented minorities into the healthcare
profession," she says. "Those that we see applying are really
unbelievable, they're the cream of the
crop." |
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Based on her own experiences of
discrimination, Reyes hopes to make the medical world more accepting of the minority talent available to
it. "Regardless of how far we've come since the Civil Rights Act was put in place, really you are still judged by how you
appear. Even I, I'm 15 years into my career in emergency medicine, and I'm still asked to empty bedpans by patients and things like that because I don't look like the stereotypical attending physician in the emergency
department. … That glass ceiling very much exists for women of color in
anything, in any field."
Reyes also focuses her energy on cultural competency training. She is currently
co-director of a mandatory course for Penn medical students called Culture
Matters, teaching students that
"ethnicity and culture are
very, very important when it comes to healthcare interactions with your
patients," says Reyes. "It's becoming more and more obvious that there's more to a person than just their
body, that the culture and the person's beliefs about healthcare are very much a part of a successful interaction between the doctor and the
patient."
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