DEI-Related Education Across Six Therapeutic Areas: Did We Move the Needle?

The health care field has seen a wealth of advances in technology, treatments, and even cures; however, there has been and continues to be an unequal distribution as well as an unequal benefit of those advances in underserved communities. Following results of an interprofessional, clinician roundtable, a series of initiatives was developed to examine health inequities in six specific areas: maternal health, cardiovascular care, pain management, oral health, dermatologic health/melanoma, and elective surgery. These therapeutic areas were selected because they are among those with the most significant health inequities leading to increased morbidity and mortality.

To the question ‘Have you, as a health care professional, utilized a self-assessment tool, such as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), to assess your implicit/ unconscious biases?’, only 13% of learners responded ‘Heard of + completed’ and only 15% responded ‘Taken other bias training’. A common comment from clinicians is ‘I care for all my patients equally, and I have no biases’. However, clinicians improved in their overall knowledge and competence of racial and ethnic disparities following education, indicating a need for clinicians to obtain DEI-related education in the context of the everyday practice, even if they may have low self-awareness of the need. Importantly, knowledge and competence fell at a 90-day follow-up period suggesting that DEI-related education must be ongoing.

Some of the qualitative data highlight real-world perspectives of clinicians and the magnitude of the educational need: ‘…In my training, I was actually told that patients of color often have a higher pain tolerance including Black mothers and Hispanic mothers. I had an attending tell us that we wait longer to call anesthesia if they are busy with other patients because mothers of color have a higher pain threshold. So absurd! Our care team had a shift meeting and had such an open and candid conversation about this myth, and I had so many members of our team thank me for the discussion…’ and ‘I work in our female health clinic 2 days a week and have now started asking my pregnant patients about their last dental visit. I have been amazed at the lack of oral care, and I have patients who are finally seeing a dentist. This must help improve birth outcomes as well.’

In the current session, medical education providers will share the design and outcomes for the initiative, including how outcomes from the previously conducted roundtable influenced the educational materials. A supporter will be invited join the panel to provide their perspective regarding the need for DEI-related education to clinicians as well as a clinical faculty member, should this abstract be accepted. Lastly, excerpts from self-reflection questionnaires will be incorporated into the presentation to encourage participants to reflect on the varied sources and expressions of biases as well as the experience of the clinical learners as they progressed through the education.