Providing culturally competent care - encountering our own biases

This Tuesday's post comes courtesy of Elissa Kinzelman-Vesely at Ascension WI Libraries. Thanks, Elissa! 

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"I’m taking a class through the NNLM: From Beyond Our Borders: Providing Multilingual and Multicultural Health Information.  One of the resources to which the instructor, Derek Johnson, points his students is the Harvard University's Project Implicit website.  We used it in the context of understanding cultural diversity and overcoming our implicit biases to provide culturally competent care.

This is what the slide from our educational module states:

The dynamics of difference refers to the different factors that can influence cross-cultural interactions. This might include bias based on historical cultural experiences, such as a mistrust among cultural groups that have previously experienced discrimination and unfair treatment, or even an implicit bias that we might not have recognized."

• Read (or listen) to the following story: Can Health Care Be Cured Of Racial Bias?

• An optional activity for you is to visit Harvard University's Project Implicit website and take one (or more) of the Implicit Association Tests. The tests are designed to measure thoughts and feelings outside of conscious awareness and control. Please read over the information and disclaimer and then proceed to selecting a test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

http://radio.wosu.org/post/can-health-care-be-cured-racial-bias