question help

ADDRESSING BIAS 1

Addressing Bias

Dana Weisbrot

Chamberlain College of Nursing

NR500: Foundational Concepts and Applications

September 2018

ADDRESSING BIAS 1

ADDRESSING BIAS 1

Addressing Bias

As healthcare providers we come to work every day ready to provide our patients with the care they need. However, not every patient will receive the same level of care. Why not? Because some patients may be morbidly obese, belong to a racial minority, have a mental disability, or simply being a young woman with a sexually transmitted disease. The list goes on and on. Regardless of what the case may be, the fact that bias in patient care negatively impacts the quality of care remains. Therefore, poor health care outcomes and provider-patient interactions are seen as a result of bias in patient care. Unconscious bias influence healthcare providers decisions and behaviors without our awareness or voluntary control and compromise patient care (Grif Alspach , 2018). First, I will present a discussion of bias; second, I will identify one personal bias; next a strategy for reduction of bias will be described, followed by a self-reflection and a conclusion.

Discussion of Bias

As a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) I will have direct patient contact which will put me at risk of allowing bias to reduce the quality of care provided to some patients. Bias can be implicit and is defined as the unconscious categorization of an individual as a member of a group or explicit (conscious) in nature (Stone & Moskowitz, 2011). This can manifest in different ways such as not spending enough time discussing the plan of care with the patient, not presenting the patient with all treatment options, or assuming that the patient may not be worth the effort of providing excellent care. As an example of healthcare provider bias Grif Alspach (2018) demonstrates evidence showing that providers better communicate with white patients than non-white patients and that bias may influence the extent of diagnostic examinations as well as the scope of therapies considered. In addition, non-white patients received less kidney transplants and coronary procedures.

Identification of Personal Bias

In my personal career as a nurse I’ve been able to identify an implicit bias which has to do with patients from religious groups that prioritize religious needs to physical needs. An example of this are Jehovah Witnesses who refuse receiving whole blood transfusions.

Strategy to Reduce Bias

In order to reduce my personal biases I plan to implement a strategy to help me become more self-aware of what these are. I will obtain information to try to view things from my patient’s point of view, so that I can understand why they choose spirituality over physical health.

Self-Reflection

This assignment helped me become more self-aware of how many different biases exist from professional healthcare providers towards our patient population. It also made me introspect and discover my own biases.

Conclusion

After learning about bias in healthcare providers I concluded that this is an important issue that affect all of us and that requires true personal reflection and self-awareness to be resolved. Healthcare providers have an enormous moral responsibility which is to care for our patients providing the highest level of care possible and this cannot be done if we don’t make the effort to introspect and face the fact that if we have a problem with a specific “type” of patient, the problem is actually in us, not in our patient.

References

Grif Alspach, J. (2018). Implicit Bias in Patient Care: An Endemic Blight on Quality Care. Critical Care Nurse, 38(4), 12-16. doi:10.4037/ccn2018698

Stone, J., & Moskowitz, G. B. (2011). Non-conscious bias in medical decision making: What can be done to reduce it? Medical Education, 45(8), 768–776. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04026.x