Glahn Joshua Zev, Hooper Rachel C, Butler Paris D
From the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.
Section of Plastic Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2023 Aug 11;11(8):e5179. doi: 10.1097/GOX.0000000000005179. eCollection 2023 Aug.
Recently, there has been heightened interest in the history of Black American plastic surgeons and their contributions to the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery (PRS). Despite the increased awareness and attention toward the lack of racial and ethnic diversity of the PRS workforce, the history of how PRS became one of the most ethnically segregated surgical specialties remains unexplored. Here, we outline the various political and cultural factors that contributed to the exclusion of Black practitioners from American PRS professional societies. This work contextualizes the rise of American PRS within the Jim Crow era and highlights the cultural significance of reconstructive procedures performed in the treatment of disfigured soldiers. Through this lens, we identify circumstances where Black surgeons were systematically denied opportunities to participate in the emerging specialty. Despite these barriers, we demonstrate how Black physicians established informal networks for professional advancement and shed light on several previously unrecognized contributions to PRS from Black surgeons. In addition, we explore how the inclusion of Black voices in PRS sparked a paradigm shift in the treatment of non-White patients that expanded the cosmetic marketplace in ways that remain significant today. Finally, we situate the ongoing disparities in Black representation in PRS within a broader historical narrative and illustrate how the stories we tell about our past continue to shape the future of our field.
最近，人们对美国黑人整形外科医生的历史及其对整形与重建外科（PRS）领域的贡献兴趣大增。尽管人们越来越意识到并关注PRS从业人员缺乏种族和民族多样性的问题，但PRS如何成为种族隔离最严重的外科专科之一的历史仍未得到探索。在此，我们概述了导致黑人从业者被排除在美国PRS专业协会之外的各种政治和文化因素。这项工作将美国PRS的兴起置于吉姆·克劳时代的背景下，并突出了在治疗毁容士兵时进行的重建手术的文化意义。通过这个视角，我们确定了黑人外科医生被系统地剥夺参与这一新兴专科机会的情况。尽管存在这些障碍，我们展示了黑人医生如何建立非正式的职业发展网络，并揭示了黑人外科医生对PRS此前一些未被认可的贡献。此外，我们探讨了PRS中纳入黑人声音如何引发了对非白人患者治疗的范式转变，以至今仍具有重要意义的方式扩大了美容市场。最后，我们将PRS中黑人代表性方面持续存在的差距置于更广泛的历史叙述中，并说明我们讲述的过去的故事如何继续塑造我们这个领域的未来。
