Medicine is equally blind to diversity of skin colour as to body diversity

I agree with Hodkinson—doctors should be taught physical examination skills that are inclusive of all patients.1As a medical student of mixed heritage, I am struck by the under-representation of pigmented skin in teaching materials and examination guides, with the variations in examination technique needed for different skin colours often overlooked.The three common assessment methods used in newborn babies—Apgar scoring and jaundice and cyanosis assessments—all initially rely on assessing skin colour.Apgar scores often use words like “pink,” “blue,” or “pale,” without advice on how to assess this in babies with darker skin tones.2 This can lead to misleading scores for darker skinned babies as the system was developed for European babies in the 1950s.It needs to be more widely taught that examining the colour of palms and soles of the feet and opening the mouth to look at the gums—rather than just inspecting the skin—as well as clinical indicators such as…
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