Black doctors mourn Tulsa hospital shooting victim Dr. Preston Phillips
The fatal shooting of Dr. Preston Phillips, one of the four people killed this week during a shooting at St.
The fatal shooting of Dr. Preston Phillips, one of the four people killed this week during a shooting at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shocked physicians across the country, and especially other Black orthopedic surgeons.
He was a “unicorn,” Dr. Alonzo Sexton said. It takes one to know one; Sexton is a Black orthopedic surgeon, too. Of 30,000 physicians in America in this discipline, only about 600 are Black, representing less than 2 percent of all orthopedic surgeons, according to 2018 data from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.
“Yes, it’s a pretty small group,” said Sexton, whose practice is in Atlanta. He and a group of other Black orthopedic physicians are building what he said will be the largest all-Black orthopedic practice in the country. “And that will take only six of us. That’s how low the number is and that’s how rare and special Dr. Phillips was.”
Dr. Preston J. Phillips.Saint Francis Health System via APSexton said their specialty is among the “least diverse” because of the difficulties in obtaining residencies. Unlike other areas of medicine, where candidates can choose a medical college to attend, in orthopedics, schools and prospects have to be matched.
“So, you rank the schools or the programs that you want to go to and the programs rank you,” he explained. “And if there’s a match, then that’s where you end up going. So, it’s highly competitive and a lot of times, with a lot of evaluations, there’s potential for bias. And that bias exists in orthopedics. It has not really done a great job of extending the pipeline.”
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