Pain & Perception

If you’ve ever picked a number between 1 and 10 to describe your level of pain, you probably know just how subjective that exercise can feel. But there’s a whole other challenge when it comes to how others perceive your pain. And your race or gender can amplify the difference. The Association of American Medical Colleges reports that “a meta analysis of 20 years of studies covering many different sources of pain found that black/African American patients were 22% less likely than white patients to receive any pain medication.” It goes on to provide recommendations on how to combat bias, implicit or otherwise.