Abstract

This poster aims to examine how healthcare and physicians negatively impact patients and lead to the conferral of a damaged patient identity on individuals in healthcare, specifically Immigrants of Color. This harm is a form of epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice is harm that affects a person as a knower. Immigrants of Color suffer both testimonial and hermeneutical injustice based on the hardships they face. Testimonial injustice is harm that affects the speaker’s credibility; this is seen in healthcare with language barriers among first-generation immigrants. Hermeneutical injustice is seen as harm when an individual’s personal experience or experience isn’t accepted or understood. In healthcare, this is seen with cultural differences in Immigrants of Color and how those translate into harm in healthcare. These harms contribute to a damaged patient identity that affects people’s autonomy and agency in healthcare. These harms contribute to the systematic oppression seen in healthcare including healthcare disparities. Both harms coupled together contribute to a damaged patient identity that treats persons as inferior and reduces their autonomy. 
This topic is extremely relevant to ongoing conversions about healthcare disparities and inequities, especially how it affects particularly vulnerable patient groups. This introduces a framework to discuss how Immigrants of Color are affected in healthcare and the connections these harms contribute to healthcare disparities. Healthcare disparities  are a system-wide problem that has individual implications for patient-physician interactions. These implications are described through epistemic harm that leads to patient vulnerability and autonomy. This ties into the question and issue of physician mistrust and why it continues.