u/Still-Regular1837

There’s a subset of people here who have a lot of negative things to say about affirmative action and are celebrating this admin targeting any signs of it. That’s fine, you can have your perspectives. But please take it serious when learning about implicit biases. Ideally before you enter medical school…

Please take the time out to research different health outcomes/mortality rates/fetal mortality rates/etc. across each demographic. And don’t just come to your own conclusions about the cause of it and chalk it up to poverty/culture. Do internal reflections about yourself, the current research and tools tailored for patients across different demographics, and how you can positively improve those outcomes. Research medical device health inequities.

Learn how medical device health inequities occur when devices are designed, tested, and calibrated primarily on white or male bodies, leading to inaccurate, unsafe, or less effective care for people of color, women, and other URMs. Ex. inaccurate pulse oximeter readings on darker skin and biased AI diagnostics

“ Based on our findings, implicit bias was least studied among pre-medical students. Furthermore, articles that assessed implicit bias at the medical student and graduate levels suggest a preference for male, non-LGBTQIA + , white, thin patients. For example, unresolved implicit bias can in turn lead to confirmation or anchoring biases that cause a physician to prioritize their own inherent beliefs rather than alternative evidence and diagnoses. As a result, the misapplication of inherently well-intentioned practical theories, such as the social determinants, is used as justification for inequities in patient care, and increased prevalence of additional biases [104, 105].”

“A 2015 longitudinal study reported that 48.7% of U.S. medical students were exposed to negative comments about Black patients by attending or resident physicians [5]. As a result, these students experienced significantly greater implicit racial bias in year 4 compared to year 1 [5].“

“Expanding on these findings, a study conducted by Sabin et. al (2009) examined implicit and explicit racial attitudes among physicians and found that most physicians across all racial and ethnic groups demonstrated implicit bias favoring White Americans relative to Black Americans, among various specialties [22]. Furthermore, the study also revealed that female physicians and Black physicians, on average, exhibited lower levels of implicit racial bias compared to their male and non-Black counterparts, respectively [22].”

“The results of this review suggest that implicit bias is not assessed early in the medical education curriculum. Furthermore, these results highlight the need for a comprehensive and longitudinal approach to mitigating implicit bias in healthcare education. Future directions should be expanded to include examining implicit bias longitudinally across the span of medical education into later career medical training stages (i.e., attending physician status). The longitudinal examination of implicit bias would enable a holistic evaluation and provide clarity on where to apply targeted anti-bias interventions along each transitional milestone, a necessary objective to mitigate long-term health inequities.”