PRE-MED PERSPECTIVES: PRE-MEDICAL STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS RACE/RACISM, SOCIAL INEQUALITY, & MEDICINE

Studying the pre-medical period of medical education can give researchers valuable insight into how medical trainees form their core beliefs and value systems. Given the racially disparate landscape of the modern American healthcare system, it is critical scholars elucidate the process by which harmful beliefs/values regarding racial inequality are instilled in medical trainees. This thesis sought to understand pre-medical students’ beliefs regarding race, racism, and social inequality in the context of practicing medicine. To investigate this topic, I conducted 23 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with advanced pre-medical students at a public university in the southern United States. I noticed pre-medical students often relied on core tenets of the dominant biomedical knowledge regime when discussing race/racism in healthcare. I contend the biomedical knowledge regime, characterized by scientific objectivity and color-blindness, is associated with problematic notions of race/racism and poses a barrier to the adoption of alternative forms of knowledge, such as antiracism.