The first study to look at workplace discrimination against American Muslim physicians was recently published by AJOB Empirical Bioethics, and the results found that nearly 50% of the doctors felt they were more scrutinized at work than their peers, and nearly 25% said they had experienced religious discrimination. Almost 10% of respondents said patients had refused their care because they were Muslim.
Aasim Padela, an emergency medicine doctor at the University of Chicago, took the survey and said this of the results, “If Muslim physicians feel uncomfortable in the profession because their identity attracts negative experience, then the profession no longer offers a means to live out their faith in service to the profession.”
The study was conducted before Donald Trump’s recent anti-Muslim rhetoric and the Muslim backlash from the San Bernardino attacks. The lead author of the study says that this makes the physicians’ accounts all the more concerning.
