Commentary: Profiling by Appearance and Assumption: Beyond Race and Ethnicity

In this issue, Acquaviva and Mintz highlight issues regarding racial profiling in medicine and how it is perpetuated through medical education: Physicians are taught to make subjective determinations of race and/or ethnicity in case presentations, and such assumptions may affect patient care. The author of this commentary believes that the discussion should be broadened to include profiling on the basis of general appearance. The author reports personal experiences as someone who has profiled and been profiled by appearance-sometimes by skin color, sometimes by other physical attributes. In the two cases detailed here, patient care could have been affected had the author not become aware of his practices in such situations. The author advocates raising awareness of profiling in the broader sense through training.