Can Intersectionality Help Lead to More Accurate Diagnosis?

Abstract

With their intersectional conceptual framework, Wilson and colleagues create a constructive platform through which physicians and other healthcare providers can discuss the multidisciplinary nature of patient care (Wilson et al. 2018). Their framework emphasizes how physicians should recognize the ways in which their patients' identities may impact their medical care, focusing on the patients' attitudes towards their providers and the efficacy of their treatment plans. Although this is an important aspect of using an intersectional framework in clinical medicine, I believe intersectionality also calls for physicians to recognize the ways in which they themselves are affected by their patients' identities. More specifically, I argue that physicians must pay special attention to the ways in which they or their field may be unconsciously biased towards or lack information about certain identity groups. This slight shift in directionality is especially important in tackling systematic errors and delays in diagnosis. Wilson and colleagues do briefly mention that intersectionality may aid diagnosis during their case presentation of Mr. Fuentes, but they do not provide concrete details on how this may be done (Wilson et al. 2018, 20). I propose that an intersectional framework that considers how patients' multiple identities affect both their own attitudes towards their physicians and their physicians' attitudes towards them may help improve diagnostic accuracy Missed diagnoses and misdiagnoses Despite improvements in diagnostic technologies, errors and delays in diagnosis continue to pose serious physical and psychological harm to patients, as well as financial harm to the healthcare system (Khullar et al. 2015). Systematic biases that disproportionately affect historically marginalized groups underlie some of these misdiagnoses (

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