Awareness of the Unconscious: 3 Ways to Mitigate Implicit Bias in our Clinical Decision-Making

Saturday, April 29, 2023

8:00 AM – 9:30 AM ET

Location: Convention Center: 144 ABC

CE: Live CME: 1.50

Leader(s)

Megan Bivins, MD (she/her/hers)

Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellow
Le Bonheur/UTHSC
Germantown, Tennessee, United States

Co-Leader(s)

Jeffrey Winer, MD, MA, MSHS (he/him/his)

Associate Professor
Le Bonheur Children's Hospital
Germantown, Tennessee, United States
LB

Lauren Burge, MD

University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Lakeland, Tennessee, United States
Angie Etzenhouser, MD (she/her/hers)

Pediatric Hospitalist, Associate Residency Program Director
Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics
Kansas City, Missouri, United States
EB

Emily Bosk, PhD,, LMSW

Rutgers University, United States
MF

Megan Feely, PhD, MSCI, MSW

University of Connecticut, School of Social Work, United States
Emily Killough, MD (she/her/hers)

Child Abuse Pediatrician, Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Children's Mercy Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri, United States

Disclosure(s):

Megan Bivins, MD: No financial relationships to disclose

Jeffrey C. Winer, MD, MA, MSHS: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.

Lauren R. Burge, MD, Burge: No financial relationships to disclose

Angie Etzenhouser, MD: No financial relationships to disclose

Emily Bosk, PhD,, LMSW: No financial relationships to disclose

Megan Feely, PhD, MSCI, MSW: No financial relationships to disclose

Emily F. Killough, MD: No financial relationships to disclose

Workshop

Description: In small groups, workshop attendees will be provided with one of two formats of a child abuse clinical vignette, where participants are blinded to the diagnosis. Format A will serve as the control where race is not specified and there are no identified socioeconomic concerns. Format ‘B’ contains socioeconomic status (SES) variables. These variables will include indicators of lower SES (income/employment, food insecurity, housing concerns, etc.). This vignette has been completed and can be provided upon request. After each facilitator guides the small groups through the vignette, we will reconvene as a larger group, do formal introductions, and compare the diagnoses between the two formats/small groups. We hypothesize that child abuse/inflicted injury will appear as a diagnosis more frequently in those small groups with the lower SES vignette than those with the control vignette. We will then engage in the lecture portion of the workshop. We will begin with a brief introduction of implicit bias and its background in medicine. Finally, we will discuss the 3 ways to mitigate implicit bias in clinical decision-making. This workshop is meant to be interactive with the use of Problem-Based Learning and cases in addition to Free Writing/Minute Paper where attendees will engage in introspection and self-reflection. At the conclusion of this session, all attendees will have the tools to identify their own implicit biases and assess systemic biases within their own institution(s).

Learning Objectives:

1. Define implicit bias and recognize its importance in clinical decision-making
2. Analyze and challenge our own underlying biases
3. Demonstrate a standardized approach in the evaluation of all medical cases 4. Evaluate systemic bias/structural racism within our own institution(s)