Anzeige
Erschienen in:
01.05.2010 | Innovations in Education
When Best Intentions Aren’t Enough: Helping Medical Students Develop Strategies for Managing Bias about Patients
Erschienen in: Journal of General Internal Medicine | Sonderheft 2/2010
Einloggen, um Zugang zu erhaltenAbstract
Introduction/Aims
Implicit bias can impact physician–patient interactions, alter treatment recommendations, and perpetuate health disparities. Medical educators need methods for raising student awareness about the impact of bias on medical care.
Setting
Seventy-two third-year medical student volunteers participated in facilitated small group discussions about bias.
Program Description
We tested an educational intervention to promote group-based reflection among medical students about implicit bias.
Program Evaluation
We assessed how the reflective discussion influenced students’ identification of strategies for identifying and managing their potential biases regarding patients. 67% of the students (n = 48) identified alternate strategies at post-session. A chi-square analysis demonstrated that the distribution of these strategies changed significantly from pre-session to post-session \( \left( {{X^2}\left( {11} \right) = 27.93,\,p < 0.01} \right) \), including reductions in the use of internal feedback and humanism and corresponding increases in the use of reflection, debriefing and other strategies.
Discussion
Group-based reflection sessions, with a provocative trigger to foster engagement, may be effective educational tools for fostering shifts in student reflection about bias in encounters and willingness to discuss potential biases with colleagues, with implications for reducing health disparities.