The past few years have been fraught with a variety of challenges for the medical community and the nation at large. We continue to see publicized acts of unnecessary violence toward members of Black and Asian communities that highlight the racial divides that still exist in our country. As health care providers who have the privilege to shape the lives of children and families along with the communities in which we serve, it is our responsibility to be empowered agents of meaningful change to heal this wound which deeply and negatively impacts so many. Through the medical care we offer, community leadership we provide, curriculum we teach, research we conduct, and culture we promote, we commit to not only stemming the tide of racism, but instead, to unite behind a common call of being anti-racist.
Curricular & Programmatic Changes
Medicine is no exception to long-standing inequity and division. We recognize that change must begin from within and wanted to share steps we are taking to promote this necessary change. We recognize bias as an inherent part of human behavior that must be addressed in order to provide equitable, high-quality patient care. To that end, we are shifting our curriculum to be more intentional about fostering an inclusive learning environment that celebrates diversity and proactively engages with learners to advocate for systems and structures to improve the care of marginalized populations.
Plans
- Restructure our longitudinal educational program for inclusion, diversity, equity and allyship learning (IDEAL) that is woven through our training programs
- Review current educational strategies, resources, and programs
- Examine new resources and active learning opportunities to incorporate into training
- Listen to each other and learn from each other’s experiences
- Program leadership reached out to have personal conversations with each of the trainees
- Mentors have personal conversations with mentees at each of the mentor meetings throughout the year
- Examine and address responses to inclusion questions on the Annual Evaluation of the Program that residents complete
- Conduct a survey of the trainees using the validated Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised
- Examine and revise our current recruitment processes
- Ensure they align with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Holistic Review model
- Continue to build upon the diversity and inclusion section on our residency website
- Examine and revise all of our current curricula using the framework below
- Know that we are all learning as we proceed, and we will make mistakes; however, we commit daily to do our best to contribute to change.
