She Was Dismissed by Doctors, and It Nearly Killed Her. How This Physician Took Action (Exclusive)

Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell was a medical student when her symptoms started.

“All of a sudden I noticed that my joints were swollen. And then I was like, ‘God, I feel really tired.’ “ Dr. Bayo, 46, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “And then I started to lose my hair.”

She went to one doctor who told her, “’You’re stressed because you’re in medical school.’ And I remember that sitting with me, and I was just like, ‘No, something’s wrong.’ ”

The next doctor thought she was pregnant — even though her boyfriend, now husband, James, was several states away in Chicago, while she was in Reno, Nevada.

It took visits to seven doctors before “finally, one doctor took the time to believe me.” 

It turned out that Dr. Bayo (pronounced Bye-oh) had the chronic autoimmune disease lupus, as well as a clotting disorder. “That could have changed my whole life where I could have dropped out of medical school if I wouldn’t have gotten the diagnosis and the help that I needed — because I was really sick,” the family medicine physician tells PEOPLE.

The second time a doctor didn’t believe her, it nearly killed her. Dr. Bayo had given birth to her second daughter, but when she told her nurse something was wrong, she was dismissed — twice. It wasn’t until she called her doctor, who discovered that she was bleeding internally. “I got transfused five units of blood, and I was hospitalized for two weeks,” she says.

The mom to daughters Jordan, 11, and Jaylin, 9, knows she’s not alone: “This is happening to people across the country,” which is why she started Clinicians Who Care. It’s a crowdsourced list of physicians, nominated by their patients, who vouch for their ability to listen. As she explains, “It’s organic and it’s a real list of stories.”

“I thought to myself, if we can search online [or use] Google or Yelp for restaurants, why can’t we create a list for patients?” she tells PEOPLE.

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Patients can add a physician who has changed their life — or scroll through looking for recommendations. As Dr. Bayo says, after it launched, “within a day, I knew it was catching fire.”

She’s already heard from patients who’ve found physicians through the list. “I had one person who said, ‘It took 42 years for a doctor to believe me.’ ”

Another person said, “‘I’ve been looking for a doctor that is LGBTQ+ friendly, and now I know this [one is because] I read someone else’s lived experience.’ ”

As Dr. Bayo explains to PEOPLE, “To be able to do something and create something free and patient-recommended … it feels so good. I’m so grateful that I was able to put this together to help people”.

Dr. Bayo adds that the problem of dismissing patients, particularly women, is systemic. She recalls learning in medical school of a code used to demean female patients. That code, she said, is WW, or “Whiny Woman”. 

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There’s also “Trainwreck, or TW, and that is to describe a person who has multiple issues,” she tells PEOPLE. “Those labels are dismissive. It’s another barrier in getting the care that you deserve to have.”

And, she adds, “I have not heard of a male equivalent, I never learned anything similar in medical school to describe a man when they’re seeking care.” She told PEOPLE that she hopes, as Clinicians Who Care grows, “The dream is to put it in the hands of patients everywhere so they can find a doctor that will believe them.” 

Bayo says she’s inspired by the lessons taught by her father. A Korean War veteran who died two years ago at age 99, Dr. Bayo says, “He was a Black man who served in a segregated army and he stayed positive. He was always about, ‘What can you do, Bayo? What can you do to help people?’ He said, ‘Think of one thing each day to give back.’ ” 

“That’s been my blueprint, my north star with everything I do,” she says. “Because there’s a lot of things that are wrong in our healthcare system. There’s a lot of things that are wrong in the world. But if I can find just one thing that is positive, that’s amazing.”