Schools Matter? Contextual Factors That May Affect Bias in Clinical Decision-making

Excerpt

Medical educators are at the vanguard of developing future physicians who will care for rapidly changing, complex, and diverse patient populations. Today’s medical schools must prepare graduates to care for the patient populations of tomorrow. We now know that clinician bias plays a contributing role in the etiology health disparities.¹ Patients’ English language proficiency, race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status all have an impact on the care delivered. Individual physician bias related to these factors is a potential contributor to health disparities through its influence on communication patterns and medical decision-making.² Little is known, however, about the impact of the learning environment on medical student bias related to race, ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status. …