Reviews for Broken Cisterns : African American Education Fifty Years After Brown

The average rating for Broken Cisterns : African American Education Fifty Years After Brown based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-25 00:00:00 Olukemi Folarin This is a must-read for residents of color, especially women. While it is a rewrite of a dissertation and so, not a page turner, it is a clear and researched story of the obstacles facing not only Dr.Dawson in her surgical residency, but the experiences of five women of color. It was written around 1998 based on her residency some years before. It is shocking that much of it is apropos for women of color in residency today. Dr. Dawson was an honored and successful general surgeon, who specialized in breast cancer surgery eventually (1994). Under her leadership, the True Family Center for Women with Cancer was established at Swedish Hospital in Seattle. When she retired from her position at Swedish, she became the inaugural Medical Director for Healthcare Equity at University of Washington Medicine, where she was pleased to help UW Medicine reposition its initiative on healthcare equity. Before her death in December, 2020 UW Medicine established the Patricia L Dawson Endowed Faculty Fellowship, a fund established to continue in perpetuity the work of making UW Medicine the best place to work and receive care a model for healthcare equity. This was a true love for her, as she lead many residents of color through the doors she had opened. The book is hard to find right now, but there is an intention to create a website where it will be available as a pdf

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-09 00:00:00 Donovan Mike This book, actually a doctoral dissertation, looks at the world of surgical residency for women of color. Residency is supposed to be a tough, weeding out process. But female residents have several extra obstacles in their way. Most female doctors are in fields like gynecology or psychiatry. Those who want to become surgeons are encouraged to choose another specialty, because surgery is "too hard." Any patient complication will be looked at especially closely. Role models are rare; the number of female surgeons is tiny, while the number of black female surgeons is practically zero. Since surgery is very much a male-dominated field, there is the usual obstacle of women having to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. Residency does not teach a person how to keep their humanity (which some surgeons have totally lost); what to say to a family whose loved one has just been declared dead (suppressing their femininity). This book looks at the personal experiences of several black female surgeons. Their residency experiences, whether at predominantly white or black institutions, ranged from difficult to very difficult. Even though this is a doctoral dissertation, it is clearly written, easy to read, and worth reading. The next time a loved one is in the hospital, and the doctor is a woman, just remember that she probably is experiencing, or has experienced, the things mentioned in this book.