Peer Responses:
- Length: A minimum of 150 words per post, not including references
- Citations: At least one high-level scholarly reference in APA per post from within the last 5 years
Peer response to Alejandra
I engaged in an in-person interview with my preceptor Monica Gonzalez FNP-C. She has been practicing at that location for 3 years and before working there, she did ER for 6 years. She informed me that measures that are in place at this clinic in order to provide healthcare equity and diversity, are that they provide a great and extent onboarding process to all of their new employees. This is a process that I had to do myself as a student, which consisted of approximately 9-10 hours of videos that included short quizzes that had to be completed before the first day at the clinic. These videos are great tools to provide fair healthcare to the different populations, and include topics such as cultural competency, sexual, child, and elder abuse, fire safety, workplace violence, chaperone training, hand hygiene, among others. My preceptor stated that at certain times throughout the year, new modules are added, and all employees must remain compliant with all assigned learning materials.
The clinical site that I am currently at is called Aria Community Health Center. It is in Lindsay, California, which is a small town with a population of approximately 1,200 people. This is one of 26 offices, in 4 different neighboring counties managed by Aria Community Health Center. The different ages that they serve range from infants to geriatric patients. Hispanics are the number one group served at that location, followed by Caucasians. That being said, the majority of the patients are Spanish speaking. This office offers primary care services and accepts walk-ins on a daily basis. The staff is able is able to efficiently meet the needs, understand, and serve the community since they receive this extent training during the hiring process and throughout the year. They also have interpreting services available to effectively communicate with people that speak different languages or dialects. I had the opportunity to see this being used with a patient that was from Oaxaca, Mexico and spoke a dialect no one knew. This really made the difference to the patient, and she really appreciated this.
After the interview with my preceptor, I realized that although staff have received training to education on how to provide equitable health, employees are still able to have implicit bias in healthcare. This means that the healthcare rendered is based on the caregivers’ beliefs, attitudes, and feelings about a certain race, ethnicity, age, gender, ability, or other characteristics (Sabin, 2022). I believe a change that can happen to their training, is that although they might remain compliant with their online education modules mentioned above, they should have in-person trainings that allow role playing to deal with difficult situations and discuss difficult topics (Sabin, 2022). Other ways to teach employees to recognize and manage implicit bias, is to create a safe environment, using incidents as opportunities to reflect, and engage in exercises that will build their skills that will allow employees to grow when confronted with uncomfortable situations (Sabin, 2022). Another good idea is to put together a reporting system, where employees can anonymously report witness incidents of implicit bias, with the goal being to identify issues and address them with involved staff and provide re-education if necessary (Sabin, 2022). Another article that talks about how implicit bias negatively affects patients and on important strategies from might decrease bias is titled “Implicit Bias and Patient Care: Mitigating Bias, Preventing Harm, published in 2023 by Doucet et al. It highlights the importance of continually educating staff and implementing policies that can help provide equitable care (Doucet et al., 2023).
References
Barber Doucet, H., Wilson, T., Vrablik, L., & Wing, R. (2023). Implicit Bias and Patient Care: Mitigating Bias, Preventing Harm. MedEdPORTAL : The journal of teaching and learning resources, 19, 11343. https://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.11343
Sabin, J. A. (2022, July 14). Tackling Implicit Bias in Health Care. New England Journal of Medicine, 387(2), 105–107. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmp2201180
