Courtney Thiele - The Ohio State University, College of Medicine
Corey Thompson - University of Colorado
Recently, there has been a growing movement within medicine towards closing the racial disparity gap. However, race continues to be a factor in the mistreatment of Black Americans, leading to perpetual inequitable access to necessities such as medical care. In response, there have been efforts made in the clinical and educational communities to close this gap. However there is still a dearth of specific curricular elements that improve medical student knowledge of cultural differences within the Black community, as well as the ability to provide more humanistic care for Black persons. We created a peer-led, evidence-based, multi-modal, fourth-year medical student elective course focusing on advanced bioethics and professional identity through an ethical focus on Black persons' historical experience in healthcare. We believed it would improve student satisfaction, create empathy for Black patients and colleagues, promote professional values, and have clinical relevance for medical students. The purpose of this session is to brainstorm educational best practices in bioethics and professionalism education to reduce racism. We describe our curricular design, rationale, and results, and then ask: What should the content of a bioethics/professionalism course on racism be? How should content be presented to avoid alienation of learners? When is the best time to teach that will spur action? How should curricula on race be assessed? What is the value of peer-teaching/design? At the end of this session the participant will be able to: 1. Identify barriers to teaching about race/racism in medicine, and their causes. 2. Collaborate with colleagues to discuss how, in a pluralistic society, the universal value of persons can be communicated to the medical learner in a way that is clinically relevant. 3. Integrate colleagues' experiences in teaching bioethics and/or professional identity with one's own, to propose innovative and diverse pedagogic solutions to the barriers in student education. 4. Discuss and propose ways to truly integrate students and other learners--in particular people of color-- in the design, implementation, and assessment of medical educational curricula focusing on race and disparities.
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