Yale Doctor Suggests Body Cameras for Physicians, Nurses to Address ‘Medical Racism’

A child psychiatry fellow at the Yale School of Medicine has floated an idea to require medical professionals to wear police-like body cameras so that doctors and nurses can be accountable if they make racist comments toward patients, the New Haven Register reported.

Dr. Amanda Calhoun said that when she worked in hospitals across the country, she frequently heard colleagues sharing racist sentiments at work. In one instance, she heard white staff laugh at a Black teenager who had died from gunshot wounds, calling him "just another criminal."

In a July opinion column published in the Boston Globe, Calhoun argued that body cams would help hold hospital staffers accountable for racist behavior, which she said can have significant impacts on patients' health and treatment outcomes.

Black mothers, for instance, are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications, a gap that Calhoun argues could be narrowed if staff knew there was a record of their interactions with patients.

Dr. Marian Evans, an associate professor of public health at Southern Connecticut State University, said the idea was promising but that any pilot program would need to address privacy concerns, given that patients are protected by HIPAA laws.

But Calhoun said patients would be in control of whether their provider wears a camera and could opt out if they weren't comfortable with someone filming their interactions, theoretically nullifying HIPAA protections.

"In my mind, patients would have the ability to decide whether they wanted their medical team to wear body cameras," she told the Register.

Calhoun envisions the initiative starting as a small-scale pilot program, before rolling out for wider use. The use of police body cams followed a similar trajectory, with at least seven states and many more cities now requiring that they be worn by law enforcement while on the clock.