Matter of Opportunity, A
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
When was the last time you had a good checkup? Last year.
It's about a year ago? Have you had any problems during the last year? No.
You've been feeling up until this nosebleed is pretty good? In this country today there's 721 white people for each white physician.
And there are 3800 people for each black physician.
And we must begin to close that gap by producing black physicians.
We'll go in a minute, okay? Sure.
We have to, I think, impress upon the students that there is a need in the profession for black physicians.
There's a need for black paramedical people.
There's a need for black midwives.
There's a need for black nurses.
And we need people in order to carry out the program that we have to carry out.
We're asking students to understand that they are being taken seriously.
And they are wanted in medical schools and in other professional schools.
What worries me is how real is this opening? Is it going to go on? Is it going to be a one and two year thing? Will we be able to maintain a pressure at a high enough level, both from the black community and the white community, to keep insisting that we need more black people in the professions and more particularly in medicine? The needs of having black people who can communicate with sick black people in the ghetto.
We need it terribly and we've got to make sure that the medical schools recognize how much they owe the black community to provide them with the opportunity to be in a medical school.
What is it that really people need throughout the entire world, but for somebody to deal with four or five primary things? The elimination of hunger, poverty, disease and ignorance.
Those are social diseases, you see, which any institution could be about the business of dealing with.
Particularly if it talks about affirming the health of any given community or society.
So the doctors can't just say that, you know, I'm a doctor and so I'm not a politician.
Hell, he's got to be a doctor, a politician, everything else.
He's got to be able to be a social force trying to bring about social change in a society which goes through a whole lot of socialization to maintain the status quo.
That enough? We've got to show him also that there's a need in these health professions for this individual.
I think one of the things that we sort of miss out is all individuals, those that are here and those that are not here, have felt sometime in their life that they wanted to do something.
Well, here in medicine there's no doubt that a black student who graduates from a medical or dental school can do something.
You have such pretty eyes, you know.
Missing something? What are you missing? Teeth.
We have two programs designed here at the University, in medicine and dentistry, to see if we can find the potential good black mind, bring him in and reinforce it.
Where's your last name? McClain.
McClain? Where do you live? 1542.
14? Northwest? What school are you in? Kindergarten, me too.
What grade are you in? I'm in her kindergarten.
What school are you in? First? Is that your mother? Thank you.
We're getting some information concerning Victoria.
Was there any problems with her? Any difficulty when she was born? No difficulty at all.
How about the mumps and the German measles vaccine? Yes, she had those.
Okay, I want you to lie down, okay? I'm not scared of doctors, are I? Hmm? Go to your school.
What is the name of your school? Westerl.
Westerl? What grade are you in this school? I'm in her kindergarten.
You have a lot of friends there? Yes.
How many brothers you have? Four.
And sisters? Are they older or younger? Who's the baby in the house? China.
I think basically what we're saying when we talk about recruiting is to get more blacks into the health profession.
Although it's certainly going to be a big problem, but all schools, not only Howard and Meharry.
Yeah, very cooperative, very good girl.
You know you're a very good girl? Who told you that? Your mommy.
Your mommy? And how about your school teacher? What does she think? Very good.
She said she lost her years when she grows up.
Why don't you change her mind? She wants to be a mom.
You can be a boy, right? Right.
We have the burden on us of showing these other 95 schools how to recruit black students.
And not just go out and get them and let them flunk out and say that we brought them here, but teach them how to keep them in, how to motivate these students.
And I think we are moving towards the end of establishing workshops, teaching methods for other white schools, telling them how to bring in black professionals and how to keep them as such.
So they recruit them and then we try to measure, test, find the potential, bring the students in, reinforce them, realizing that they have some weaknesses, but also realizing that four years hence when we graduate them, they will be as fine a physician, a dentist as any.
I think one of the problems with recruitment is that I can't emphasize enough that blacks, young blacks, have to see black professionals.
And in many neighborhoods that you go into in which there's a significant black population, there are no black professionals.
So when you talk about recruiting and talking about taking someone from that neighborhood and making a black professional out of this particular person, he doesn't know or she doesn't know what you're talking about.
The only thing that they've seen thus far are white professionals.
Most of the hospitals that you go to in this country today have no black physicians as interns or residents.
And those few that are accepting black interns now are in such short number simply because there's not enough blacks to go around.
Everybody wants their little black intern because of a number of reasons.
But we've got to show these kids that there are such a thing as a black professional.
And this is I think one of the big hang ups in recruitment, where are the black professionals? And I think the students should find them and talk to them like the other day.
The hospital admission of this 59 year old negro male who was presented with chief complaint of abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, leachness, hemodemesis, swelling of the legs and hands and necrotic eyes.
He admires to drinking approximately one kind of alcohol daily and smokes approximately a pack of cigarettes every day.
This has been on the period of many years.
How long have you been drinking heavily? Every day? What do you mean by heavily? I mean, I mean I first came out of the army.
When did you come out of the army? I came out in 45.
In 44 years you've been drinking heavily.
And what's the quantity of it? Here before the black professional has not been something that a lot of us now would be particularly proud of in terms of where his set of values is.
I think over the past few years and with the set of medical students, dental students that we're turning out now it's a particular type of thought who can go out and relate to the now young man in the street who possibly wouldn't want to be one of the Cadillac driving, slick -haired old positions of the past and not provide any service.
And I think this is very important that when they see young black professionals now, I think the image is different.
It's something more that they can identify with both in terms of not only appearance but in terms of aspirations, goals and desires.
And I think we must instill this in our own students that we have now.
And when we bring in a young black student now, don't let him turn.
Don't let him get all money crazy because our people don't have money.
We have to deal with other systems than just money.
Maybe goods and services or something.
I think this is very significant about what we do with our students.
Well, there's a phony atmosphere of tension that surrounds the health profession.
It's supposed to be so difficult and some schools make it very difficult.
But I think that for the high school students who will be seeing this film, that they ought to speak personally with black medical students and find out exactly what it's like.
And I think that many of them would benefit from conversations with people who have actually lived with the situation and know what it's all about because there's no reason why a black student should be refused admission to a medical school or dental school simply because he did not perform well on an aptitude test which included questions on Broadway and plays written by Joe Jalofsky.
That just doesn't happen to be us.
And so we fall down on the aptitude test, the medical aptitude test where they ask the question the year I took it, what was the latest play on Broadway? Well, I don't know.
Ask me something about James Brown or Reatha Franklin.
You know, and then I know what's happening.
And if I don't know that, then I'm not anywhere.
One of the things that has kept black people out of dentistry here to pour beside financial consideration has been the fact that we have imposed between our people and professional schools what we consider invalid tests of ability and these being the standardized tests that are administered in the form of the medical college admissions test and the dental aptitude test.
So going on this premise that black people cannot be measured in terms of capability and ability by these tests.
We selected some 21 black students who had not fared so well on this test and admitted them into the college of dentistry.
We thought also that it might be well to take students and to give them what we call what would be called academic reinforcement in which they would be exposed to several areas back at the mission.
And our rate of success I think we are all particularly pleased with.
If this comes out statistically like it has so far at the end of the year, I think the program can be expanded and we will have a model that can serve as something that we hope to project nationwide and put black people in school and stop hanging them up with all these little tests that don't mean anything about their capabilities.
I think when you talk to some of these students you can see that they'll turn out to be some of the best professionals you've ever seen.
And it's not what I wanted at all, teaching.
I wanted to go into some medical profession but my score wasn't high enough on the national exams.
I don't know what to attribute this to.
It might have been my well, my fault.
I considered myself a pretty good student.
I just don't see what it was because it's when I compare myself with some of the students here already now, I know that I'm just as good and in some particular instance it's better.
I think I took the exam five times.
And each time it didn't get any better.
I was really getting to the point where I was getting disgusted.
And then some of the academic reinforcement programs came along.
I even said to myself when I ended the program that I wouldn't do any better on exams.
But that proved to be false also.
The academic reinforcement you passed exams? Yes.
And I had at least five times more than that.
If a student right now wants to go to medical school does not have to be a genius.
He does not have to have let's say well, if he's willing to work hard, if he's got average intelligence, he can make it.
But what he needs really is a certain amount of information as to where are the doors.
It's one thing to open a door by turning a knob.
It's another to knock a door down to get through.
But you've got to know where the door is before you can get the darn thing.
Well I said yes, I want to go to college.
The teacher looked at me and said well aren't you in the wrong field? Don't you have something else in mind? Can't you be a teacher or a gym, anything, but a doctor.
Black people have been pushed away from the profession by high school counselors.
In fact, last year we spoke with some students who had considered going into medicine and they finally came into college.
And they were told that it was too difficult to get through the pre -medical curriculum in college so that they could forget about medicine.
I'm sure much of it is well -meant counseling.
The people who tell this are sincere that you don't have a chance, face reality, take another career.
And this is where the education has to go all the way back down the line.
That in fact the black student can get into medical school.
That in fact there is no reason for him not to pursue that career.
The exact logistics of how to do it may not be available to him.
And this is where they need an avenue to find it out.
It's been my opinion most of the time.
Most medical schools felt that the burden of the information was up to the applicant to seek out.
And most of the time all the schools that I've ever received any information from, I've had to write and request information from that school.
And the initial information that you may receive comes from a counselor or a professor would you admire or or even a guy that that you might have met in school who applied to a medical school the year before, it's word of mouth.
We receive any active recruitment from any medical school in the country when I was an undergraduate.
What do you do when you got information that you don't like? For example if somebody says, look face up to it, it's impossible to get into competition drop and all that overblowning.
And why don't you just face reality and take another career? This really happened to me.
How did you know the best card? Well, I hate to say this but I just considered it a source.
What are you here for today? For high blood pressure.
Have you been taking anything for your blood pressure? Yeah.
Have you felt better since you've been taking it? You haven't felt any better? No.
Do you still take the medicine? Yeah.
Now, have you ever tried not taking the medicine? Yeah.
And when you don't take it, do you have dizziness and glomerulism? That's why I know it's the medicine.
That's why you know it's the medicine? Mm -hmm.
Did you take your medicine today? No.
You didn't take it today? Did you take it yesterday? Mm -hmm.
You didn't take it yesterday? Did you take it the day before? Yes.
When's the last time you've taken your medicine? I didn't take it this week at all.
You didn't take it this week at all? What about last week? I've taken it once last week.
Once last week? Then? No wonder you're sick.
You're going to start taking your medicine again.
We're going to give you some different medicine, but you're going to have to start taking your medicine again.
Before the pressure's too high.
That's higher than it's ever been.
When they gave you that medication, I'm talking to you very soon.
When they gave you that medication, they gave it for you to take.
So I want to be a doctor, not because there's a demand for black doctors, but it's a field that I was interested in.
And I will always be interested in medicine no matter what.
And I don't feel as if anybody has to guide me that way.
I don't feel as if I'm going to be stopped.
I'm going to be a black doctor no matter what.
And that's the way I feel all students should feel today.
That nobody's going to be in their way if they really want to do anything.
If anyone wants to accomplish anything, they'll do it.
And no guidance teacher or dean of admissions to any college can tell you what you're not going to do.
I came from a family who could not financially afford to see you, and the counselor couldn't tell you anywhere the rights of money or anything like that.
And the only outlook was that, alright, if you were an age student, sure you may have got a few scholarships, but how many age students are in a class? You may have one or two.
So if you're an average student sitting down in the middle of the group, you have no advice from anybody to tell you anything.
You just have to have a determination to do something.
And so like I did, I'd say, well, if I can't get any money from anywhere, I'll just work in the summer and try to make enough money to pay tuition.
And I get there, I'll try to get me a job up on the campus.
Some way I worked as a secretary for different professors and things like that.
No one had told me anything about, you know, you can write off and get money through different places.
So don't let that be a hang up about that finance.
When you get there, you face those other bridges when you get there.
You try to get you enough money in the summertime to try to get that tuition.
If you ever get there and get in and if you really want to be there, you won't stay.
If you have to go to some professor showing and crying and say, Lord, you just got to give me this job.
Let me type a couple of letters for you or something, you know.
And if your counselor isn't any of you see you, that, you know, don't let that get you over.
And by tight, I mean academically tight.
I mean, our people have often been subjected to half -baked treatment out of people who socialize through a professional school or something.
We're not here saying that we don't want you to learn medicine.
We don't want you to learn science.
Academics are not important because they are.
But we think that you must have considerable expertise to practice on our people.
But what we are saying that when you decide that you take it with a dedication and we're here to help you and we're here to point out those points that will help our people.
But don't by any stretch of the imagination take it.
We're saying come to medical school if you've got commitment, if you've got concern that's always required.
You have to develop your mind and that's very important.
There's so many outlets that you can have for medicine.
You can be anything from a technician to one of the best surgeons to a heart specialist, anything.
Things like x -ray technology.
Technicians who work on blood chemistry, histology, pathology.
There's all sorts of fields to open.
We're going to need someone just to read our computers in the future as far as our diagnostic computers are.
There's going to be a time when we're going to feed information into machines that we've gathered from patients.
The instruments that you see in here are the all of the instruments that one would use in a hospital if he was going to follow a sick patient, let's say one that had a heart attack.
Likewise, it's the kind of instrumentation that is used right now to follow what the heart is doing of the astronauts which are on the moon.
Here we have a live animal which has about a week after he's had heart surgery where we've gone in, opened up his heart, put different things on it so he can follow how the heart works.
All of this is just from one heartbeat.
All that information we get from one single heartbeat.
So you can see that there's a tremendous amount of information that comes out of studying the heart which you can only get by using a computer.
It's a standard heart operation that has an absolute prognosis almost, 100 percent for repairing a defect that's a congenital defect.
There are about 126 medical people that come in contact with that patient.
This total procedure from the entrance to the front door of the hospital going through the clinic, the diagnostic workup, the surgery, the rehabilitation.
There are only six MDs required in that whole entourage.
Yet that procedure is impossible to carry out and rehabilitate the patient.
This means, for example, there are laboratory technicians who do lab studies, x -ray technicians who do x -ray studies, the operating room technicians, the nurses involved, the people who monitor the sophisticated computer machines, the heart pump, the bypass operation, then in the rehabilitation of the patient.
There are a number of specialists in the physical rehabilitation field involved there.
But it's about 126 in that total team.
Now there are certainly some students who would feel that they could go to medical technology school but might not feel that they could go through college and then into a professional school.
And some of those who have even gone through college might feel for various reasons that they don't want really to become physicians, but that they would enjoy very much becoming extremely good technicians and running really first class laboratories.
And I think this could be sold to them, particularly if they had a chance to come and see what goes on in a lab and how it really contributes to the care of the patient and so forth.
Number one, when you speak of paramedical care, you also think of preventative medicine.
And I think if you've been in a hospital or you've seen how a hospital works, the patient load, especially a charity hospital like we have here, or most hospitals where black people go, the patient load is so tremendous that the patient can't receive adequate care.
So if we had number one program of paramedicine wherein we could have community health centers where we could have primary health care out in the community.
If we had preventative medicine that we taught, even at the level of youngsters in schools, then I think this would lessen the patient load at our hospitals and consequently we could provide our people with even basic better care there.
If people find out that disease is a serious problem for a country, then the people, if it's only 10 % of the population, or if it's only 1 % of the population that has knowledge about health, they have more responsibility to make the language understandable and take the mystique out of medicine, which is the jargon, which is the language, and make that information available to everybody.
So the little boy, 10 years old, can start to understand how to recognize communicable diseases and how to move about dealing with certain kinds of preventative kinds of things.
What it means is you engage everybody, you see.
No longer do you just look to the talented tenth, you know, but you start to work with people from every strata, from every level, and you don't make class distinctions, but you recognize that information has got to be shared across the line so that the gap is closed by the sharing of information, data about one's life, so that when individuals can have the information, they don't have to call a committeeman, they don't have to call a politician, they don't have to call a doctor in paying 10, 15, 20 dollars every time they think they've got a health problem, but they can begin to start affirming each other.
And blacks all over are now searching for that way of expression.
And in medicine you can do it.
You can do your thing in medicine.
Medicine you can really show, as they say, show your expertise, you can help people.
You can show anybody, anywhere, that you're just as good as the next person, because here you practice an art.
And I think this is very important to blacks, that they be able to realize their potential.
Educating all the people of America to be, you know, to have the same maturation point, I'm pretty close to it, I have the option that's not impractical, you know, it's a very, at this point it's a desire, it's a notion, you know, it's a high hope.
It only becomes practical when people start doing that.
Where does it start? The first individual who recognizes the need and who starts moving that way, what does he do? He becomes the model for all the individuals.
And that's what I'm all about, with regard to my work, the kind of stuff I do.
It doesn't matter whether I'm working at Temple Community Mental Health or University of Pennsylvania Children's Hospital, or working for the Bulletin, scrubbing floors, whatever, you don't have to have a particular title, you know, or a particular kind of job.
There's only one function that is to gather information all the time and share it with people so that the elimination of hunger, disease, poverty, and ignorance, you know, you're constantly about that kind of business.
I think we need to impress upon the black high school student that the doctor, the physician, is not the only person who can deliver health care to our people.
That the black community is in need of midwives, the black community needs nurses, we need nurses' aids, nurses' assistants, physicians' aids, we need dentists, we need dental assistants, we need everybody who can contribute to the delivery of health care to our people.
And these students must not be deterred, they must not be hampered by black and white, I should say by negro and white people who claim that the profession is too high, too far away for little black kids to get anything to do with.
And I think that they should ignore anybody who tries to move them away from the profession.
They must seek out people who are actually in the profession, talk with them, have long conversations, and find out exactly how it is.
It is filled with trauma, but there's not too much, because black people have taken enough already, and I don't see why they can't stand medical school.