West Tahira J, Loomer Kimberly, Wyatt Tasha R
Fourth-Year Medical Student, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
Associate Dean of Multicultural and Student Affairs, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University; Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Health Behavior, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
MedEdPORTAL. 2019 Oct 18;15:10840. doi: 10.15766/mep_2374-8265.10840.
Physicians' unconscious biases have been linked to health disparities within ethnic and racially diverse communities. Addressing these unconscious biases is difficult but may be ameliorated by raising individuals' awareness of the ethnoracial makeup of their personal and professional networks and reflecting on whether it needs to be expanded while in medical school.
First- and second-year students were provided with an overview of the ethnoracial makeup of individuals within the state, community, and medical school as a means to reflect on the ethnoracial makeup of their future patient population. Following this overview, students engaged in an activity adapted from the University of Houston, which allowed them to visually represent the ethnoracial diversity within their networks. Written reflections on the adapted activity were collected, analyzed using manifest content analysis, and reported according to themes.
The results indicated that the activity was valuable in helping students visualize their current exposure to ethnoracially diverse individuals (143 of 357 responses [40%]) and reflect on their need to expand the level of ethnoracial diversity in their lives (47 of 357 responses [13%]). Additionally, students provided comments to help improve the activity when used in another institution.
Assisting students in raising their awareness of the ethnoracial diversity in their personal and professional networks is a step toward addressing the unconscious biases that emerge in physicians while in clinical practice. This activity, designed to raise students' awareness of ethnoracial diversity, originated in Augusta, Georgia, but can be adapted to any state.
医生的无意识偏见与不同种族和族裔社区内的健康差异有关。解决这些无意识偏见很困难，但通过提高个人对其个人和职业网络中种族构成的认识，并在医学院期间反思是否需要扩大这种构成，可能会有所改善。
为一年级和二年级学生提供该州、社区和医学院内个人种族构成的概述，作为反思其未来患者群体种族构成的一种方式。在此概述之后，学生参与了一项改编自休斯顿大学的活动，该活动让他们直观地展示其社交网络中的种族多样性。收集了对改编活动的书面反思，使用显性内容分析法进行分析，并按主题进行报告。
结果表明，该活动有助于学生直观了解他们目前接触到的不同种族的人（357份回复中有143份[40%]），并反思他们是否需要在生活中扩大种族多样性（357份回复中有47份[13%]）。此外，学生还提供了一些意见，以帮助改进该活动在其他机构的使用。
帮助学生提高对其个人和职业网络中种族多样性的认识，是朝着解决医生在临床实践中出现的无意识偏见迈出的一步。这项旨在提高学生对种族多样性认识的活动起源于佐治亚州的奥古斯塔，但可以适用于任何州。
