Gender stereotypes are not just descriptive, they are prescriptive. It’s not just how women are, it’s how women are supposed to be. And women who behave out of role are punished for it. —Susan Fiske, PhD I have been thinking a lot about what happened to Hillary Clinton. She has her faults – I could…
When Patients are Biased The apparent conflict between patient rights and non-discriminatory policies is complex. However, organizations create an ethical and practical slippery slope when they meet patient demands for providers with specific (clinically irrelevant) characteristics. If a request for a provider with a specific skin tone is honored, must patient requests for a provider…
There is a great deal of overlap between appropriate training for cultural competence/flexibility and training on implicit (automatic, often unconscious) biases. A key aspect of cultural competence/flexibility is awareness of the way our cultural beliefs systems shape automatic expectations and attitudes (and biases). A major barrier to cross-cultural relationships is our automatic, conscious and unconscious reactions…
