In the ensuing weeks, I continued with my work, behaving as if the incident had no impact on me while clamping down the embarrassment of being called a racial slur in front of my team. When others asked how I was doing, I said that I was fine in an attempt to make it go away.

Takesha Valentine Cooper, program director of the Psychiatry Residency Training Program and chair of medical school admissions, equity advisor, and vice chair for education in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the University of California Riverside School of Medicine in Riverside, California discusses the importance of supporting historically marginalized medical students and residents who have faced discrimination.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the March 2022 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.