Stereotypes and advocacy in health care: A case study of a Black woman’s story in Grey’s Anatomy Kallia O. Wright / University of Miami
Over the years, Black women have been portrayed in various ways in the media. Using the story of Dr. Miranda Bailey’s heart attack on an episode of the TV show, Grey’s Anatomy, I focus on how that representation highlights how a Black woman’s race and cultural expectations of how she should manifest her health are connected to her health status. Within this account, Dr. Bailey encounters challenges in her efforts to have her health concerns acknowledged and validated. She recognizes stereotypes and problematic conclusions about her symptoms and seeks out advocates to validate her concerns so she can receive assistance.
In the past, controlling and stereotypical images or frames of Black women were visible in the media (Collins, 1991, 2000). Black women have been framed as the Mammy (asexual and obedient), the Matriarch (a mother figure, but emasculating, overly aggressive, and assertive), the Welfare Mother (a bad mother, blamed for poverty and her children’s failures), and the Jezebel (promiscuous or sexually aggressive, sexually deviant). Later studies reported additional images of Black women in the media, e.g., the Angry Black Woman (irritated and outraged), the Black Lady (professionally successful, poised, and graceful), and the Sapphire (hostile, loud, nagging wife who emasculates her husband) (Harris-Perry, 2011; Meyers 2013). In contemporary entertainment TV storylines that focus on Black women’s health, we see these stereotypes reflected, reinforced, challenged, and rationalized.
In health care contexts, Black women have had to assertively articulate their symptoms. In Grey’s Anatomy, Dr. Bailey is an African American woman, who, over the show’s timeline, moves from the position of resident to first woman Chief of Surgery at the fictional Grey Sloan Memorial hospital. In Season 14, episode 11, titled, “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper,” Dr. Bailey experiences symptoms of a heart attack. She seeks care at a competing hospital, Seattle Presbyterian in the hopes of being treated quickly and without the fuss that would be expected at Grey Sloan. However, while there, she encounters dismissal, disbelief, accusations of confusion, and demeaning communication.
In the story, Dr. Bailey enters Seattle Presbyterian and immediately faces barriers and preconceived notions about her presence there. Her ordeal begins after she walks up to the nurses’ station and tries to get the attention of a nurse who is distracted and keeps interrupting her. After several attempts, Dr. Bailey assertively expresses her symptoms and underscores her self-diagnosis by foregrounding her medical background. She declares, “Okay, interrupt me again, I’m coming over that counter. My name is Miranda Bailey. I am Chief of Surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial, and I believe that I am having a heart attack.”
This initial interaction allows us to see the concept of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a predicament where a person perceives that in a context, there is an actual or presumed stereotype about the cultural group to which that person belongs. Subsequently, the individual is vigilant about how their behavior is seen in the other’s eyes. The individual facing that actual or perceived threat may either confirm the stereotype or push back against it (Steele & Aronson, 1995). In Dr. Bailey’s heart attack story, in the hopes of receiving optimal care and preempting any possible stereotyped perceptions of her as a Black woman, she reveals her profession before declaring her self-diagnosis.
Throughout the episode, her responses to medical practitioners cycle through a few stereotypes. In her initial attempt to get the nurse’s attention, she exhibits the Black Lady frame, with polite and quiet, “Excuse me’s.” After the interruptions, she moves into the Angry Black woman frame with, “Okay, interrupt me again, I’m coming over that counter.” Throughout the storyline, the show leans more into the Matriarch and Angry Black Woman stereotyped frames by emphasizing Dr. Bailey’s frustration and annoyance with the lack of care. However, notably, as a counterbalance and rationalization, the show provides us with insights as to why the character may be so angry and frustrated. She is annoyed when the intern tells her she is confused about her symptoms. She is annoyed about incompetence in symptomology assessment when an intern does not know how to execute the first test, a posterior electrocardiography. She becomes more frustrated when the Chief of the hospital supports the intern’s assessment. She becomes angrier when the medical practitioners refuse to give her the test she requests, and focus instead on her psychological health.
This episode also allows us to see how a Black woman may have to advocate for herself in the healthcare setting. Dr. Bailey does so by demanding to read her medical chart, which she is able to do due to her educational background. She even teaches the intern how to assess her properly in the first test. She demands to speak with someone with more authority. Eventually the Chief of the hospital and a psychiatrist appear. When the Chief arrives and tells her she’s all good, she counters, “I most certainly am not all good.” She advocates for herself when the Chief attempts to steer the conversation toward her psychological health by asking her about stress in her life and marriage. She challenges the sexism in the questions by asserting, “Do not go down that road with me. The road where a woman shows up to the ER with physical symptoms and you decided that it must be that she’s not able to handle all her feelings. No, this is not about anxiety. My secret heart doesn’t need fixing. My actual heart needs fixing…I am having a heart attack, and I’m not going anywhere until you do a full cardiac workup and prove it.”
She is pointedly assertive as she calls out deficiencies in the Chief’s training and the psychiatrist’s knowledge of how coronary heart disease symptoms appear in women. To the Chief, she states, “Your teachers didn’t get the memo that women’s heart attacks don’t manifest in way they do in men. They’re not all chest clutching, vomiting, ‘help, my arm is numb,’ boom, floor drop.” In response to a demeaning description of herself by the psychiatrist, she levels at him, “63% of women who die suddenly from coronary heart disease had no previous symptoms, and women of color are at a far greater risk. So, if I was consulting on the patient you describe, I would take into consideration statistics that would never occur to people who look like you.”
The episode also shows ways in which Black women in healthcare contexts can experience advocacy from others, albeit unsuccessfully. Other patients in the healthcare context can advocate for Black women. In the episode, another patient yells at the doctors to give Dr. Bailey the stress test; however, she is ignored. Black women can solicit assistance from their network who have the social capital and authority to advocate on their behalf. When Dr. Bailey’s efforts to receive a stress test are unsuccessful, she calls her friend and peer, African American, Dr. Maggie Pierce, a cardiothoracic surgeon from Grey Sloan, who brings along another colleague, African American, Dr. Richard Webber, Chief Medical Officer from the same hospital. However, their efforts were initially rebuffed, and only after Dr. Bailey collapses, is their expertise accepted and is she taken into surgery.
All in all, this story about Dr. Bailey’s heart attack is educational as it informs us of the experiences of a marginalized group in healthcare. We see that the story’s context is characterized by a lack of knowledge of Black women’s health and cultural ascriptions of how their health is supposed to be manifested. As audience members, we also see how difficult it is for a patient’s bodily experiences to be regarded as credible when they do not align with traditionally privileged medical knowledge. While there is a danger of reinforcing stereotypical perceptions of Black women, the creation and dissemination of these stories is important as they reflect real-life experiences. More importantly, these stories may prompt more work to eliminate life-threatening stereotypes Black women may face in healthcare context (Collins, 2000) thereby leading to improved health outcomes.
- Dr. Miranda Bailey (played by Chandra Wilson) interacts with a nurse (Screengrab from author)
- Dr. Miranda Bailey interacts with an intern (Screengrab from author)
- Dr. Miranda Bailey interacts with the Chief of Seattle Presbyterian
- Dr. Miranda Bailey interacts with the Chief of Seattle Presbyterian while a patient interrupts (Screenshot from author)
- Dr. Miranda Bailey, Dr. Maggie Pierce, and Dr. Richard Webber interact (Screenshot from author)
Collins, P. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.
Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Harris-Perry, M. V. (2011). Sister citizen: Shame, stereotypes, and Black women in America. Yale University Press.
Meyers, M. (2013). African American women in the news: Gender, race, and class in journalism. Routledge.
Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of
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