Myth that people of color have higher pain threshold still pervasive in Dutch medicine

The myth that people of color have a higher pain threshold is still pervasive in Dutch medicine, according to a study into discrimination in Dutch healthcare that will soon be published in the scientific journal BMJ Open, NU.nl reports. Over a quarter of ethnically diverse Dutch patients have experienced that healthcare providers dismissed their pain because of their cultural background.

Charifa Zemouri, health scientist and lead author of the BMJ Open article, warns that people of color are not getting proper care as long as healthcare providers’ prejudices get in the way. “When healthcare providers do not take the complaints and pain of patients of color seriously or have misconceptions about this, the patient does not receive fair care,” she told NU.nl.

The researchers surveyed 80 Dutch patients with pain complaints and a migration background. A white Dutch man told the researchers that doctors kept asking his wife if she was pretending to be in pain. “We were told several times that people from the Caribbean often act ‘dramatic,’” he said. She turned out to have cancer.

A Dutch-Turkish said: “The physiotherapist’s immediate diagnosis was that it was my mother’s culture that caused her headaches because, as a woman, she has always had to behave humbly and has been oppressed.”

In 2000, scientific research already showed that there was no difference in pain experience between white people and people of color. Since then, more scientific studies have been published that substantiate that research, while none have refuted it.

Earlier this year, NU.nl also discovered that many Dutch doctors still used race as an indicator when testing lung capacity. Researcher Zemoui commented on that at the time, saying that this outdated misconception that ‘race’ is anything more than a social construct based on skin color puts people’s lives in danger. “Because of this outdated way of thinking, people with a dark skin color have to be much sicker than people with a light skin color to receive the same lung failure diagnosis.”

“Race is an invented concept, but is sometimes presented in healthcare as a biological fact,” said Judith Venderbos, a researcher into social inequality at the national expertise center Pharos said to NU.nl in March. “That is incorrect and contributes to health disparities.”

NU.nl now found that Pharos—the national expertise center that works to combat health disparities—has been informing general practitioners and other healthcare providers since 2014 that Moluccan and Indian elderly people “often have a high pain threshold.” The newspaper also found various other incorrect and outdated information on the website Huisarts-migrant.nl. Pharos promised to revise the outdated passages.