Back in May, I watched the video of four police officers murdering George Floyd. I, like so many others, was dumbfounded. In our Doctoring course, our faculty barely allowed us to palpate the carotid artery, and this man had a knee on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. I spent the next few hours locked in my room. I had to do something. I opened my laptop and began writing the first draft of what our school would later recognize as “An Open Letter to UACOM-P.” Over the next week and half, I was joined by a coalition of students and alumni who were also dumbfounded by the blunt racial injustices in this country. We all needed to do something. We spent hours over Zoom calls drafting and redrafting our letter, formatting, and researching actionable items for our school to take. We were dedicated.
We knew the letter would be emailed to the deans. But, who would send it? Well, we wanted the school to know that our sentiments did not belong to a few frustrated students—we were a unified group of 130+ signers that wanted institutional level change. So, having one single student send out the email did not seem like a viable option.
The second concern was professionalism. Was our letter professional? We were challenging the status quo. We were going to put our school in an uncomfortable position. Would we get kicked out of medical school? We decided to create a burner email address. We would send the email through an anonymous account that could not be traced to any single student.
Hours before the Letter was published in The Differential, I emailed the letter to our deans using the burner account. It was 8:30am to be exact. I was TERRIFIED. Surely, they would find out who was involved. I was in multiple group chats that morning with other students who were heavily involved in the Letter process. We were nervous. We shouldn’t have done this.
Then, I saw a response from one of the deans. That person thanked us for the email and said the school would issue a formal response in the coming days. Phew. We were safe.
We are lucky to attend a medical school that listens to its student body. We are fortunate that faculty members not only heard our concerns, but also decided to take action. Students and faculty now get to leave behind a legacy of moving towards racial justice. How cool is that?
My point here is that the concept of “professionalism” was a serious hindrance for a group of students that wanted to make a positive change in our institutional setting—standing up against racial injustice. This serves only as one example. There are others. Colin Kaepernick peacefully protested police brutality by taking a knee during the National Anthem. He was blacklisted from the NFL because he stepped outside the boundaries of being a professional athlete. He was not professional. For years, the victims of Harvey Weinstein stayed quiet because challenging a man of his caliber was not professional in Hollywood.
Now, I am not talking about the brand of professionalism that the school teaches MS1s in our “Introduction to Medicine” course. Be on time (10 minutes early is on time). Wear a tie. Close your laptops when someone is speaking to you. Those are all good things. I am talking about the brand of professionalism that reinforces power dynamics. The brand of professionalism that is used by people in power to oppress the voices that challenge the status quo. Oftentimes, this brand of professionalism contradicts our values of justice, equality, and integrity.
On January 6th, there was a coup d’etat. Rioters sieged the Capitol building as Congress was affirming Joe Biden’s presidency. I will not get political about why this happened or how it happened. The bottom line is that it happened. Participants posted pictures of themselves vandalizing government property, and then they just walked out. It is hard not to make comparisons between these recent events in D.C. and the months of protests during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. The D.C. rioters were unprofessional. While looting did occur during some of the BLM protests, for the most part, these protests were peaceful. They were professional.
Still, the BLM protests made individuals in positions of power uncomfortable. It challenged the status quo in this country. Hence, it was not professional to affiliate yourself too closely with this movement. Especially in medicine.
Many of us are working to become great physicians. We chose this career path because we like helping people; however, just because we will be professionals (noun), this does not mean we have to sacrifice our values to be professional (adjective). We get to be leaders. What we say matters to a whole lot of people. We should always, respectfully, use our voices to fight for something better. Professionalism should never become a veil that we hide behind in the face of injustice. Because, well in that case, professionalism is stupid.
Tina Samsamshariat is a member of the class of 2022 at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix. She received her Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and her MPH from the University of Southern California. She enjoys surfing, climbing, and rap music. Twitter: @TSamsamshariat