Check your Blindspots

In this section, we will learn about biases and how they may affect our perceptions and judgments about our patients.

Bias is an inclination to judge without question, awareness, intention, or control. Biases are shaped by a lifetime of real-world encounters, vicarious experiences (books, magazines, movies, tv, newspapers, and stories), our cultural identities, the way we identify with subcultures, level of education, economic status, or things like where we shop, eat, play, or pray.

Everybody has biases, and they work in moments when we may minimize something important, or make more of something that really may be unimportant.

Although it may be uncomfortable at times, for our patients’ sakes, we must be willing to acknowledge our own biases and their effects.