47 I Healing Through The Power Language: Addressing Bias and Building Trust in Healthcare for Communities of Color

Summary:

We delve into the power of language in healthcare, focusing on how language shapes patient experiences and trust. Reflecting on biases, especially in physician notes, we examine studies revealing how negative language disproportionately affects black and Latino patients, and the resulting implicit biases among medical students. We emphasize the significance of cultural humility and respectful language, including self-identification, and we advocate for systemic policy changes over individual blame. Highlighting the need for inclusive healthcare environments, we discuss the tools to raise clinician awareness of their biases and the importance of community partnerships.

Overview:

• Reflecting on biased experiences in healthcare; Trust and skepticism.
• Importance of individuals making changes; Patient care improvement.
• Study in JAMA Network Open; Language in physician notes.
• Negative vs. positive language; Impact on black and Latino patients.
• Cultural humility in patient care; Diverse perspectives and beliefs.
• Using language respectfully, Self-identification, and political correctness.
• Inclusive healthcare spaces; Option to not answer uncomfortable questions.
• Policy changes; Data supporting systemic issues vs. individual blame.
• Media exposure on bias; Study on linguistic cues and implicit attitudes.
• Tools capturing audio content; Analyzing clinician-patient encounters.

Key Sources

• NRC-RIM 
• NARHC Conference
• Power of Language Slides
• Are You What You Read? Predicting Implicit Attitudes to Immigration Based on Linguistic Distributional Cues From Newspaper Readership; A Pre-registered Study
•  Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts 
• Physician Use of Stigmatizing Language in Patient Medical Records
• Tackling Implicit Bias in Health Care
• UnBIASED: Understanding Biased patient-provider Interactions And Supporting Enhanced Discourse
• About One-in-Four U.S. Hispanics Have Heard of Latinx, but Just 3% Use It
• How language shapes the way we think (Dr. Lera Boroditsky)
• Diversity Style Guide
• North American Refugee Health Conference

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