Approaches for Residents to Address Problematic Patient Behavior: Before, During, and After the Clinical Encounter

The physician experience of patient to provider prejudice (PPtP)

Background

Patients can demonstrate prejudice and bias toward minoritized physicians in a destructive dynamic identified as PPtP (Patient Prejudice toward Providers). These interactions have a negative impact on the physical and mental well-being of both those who are targeted and those who witness such behaviors.

Study purpose

The purpose of this study was to explore the PPtP experiences of attending physicians who identify as a minority based on race, ethnicity, citizenship status, or faith preference.

Methods

Qualitative methodology was used to collect data using in-depth interviews. 15 attending physicians (8 male, 7 female, aged 33-55 years) who identified as minorities based on ethnicity, citizenship status, or faith practices were interviewed individually. Interviews were conducted using a guide validated in previous studies and content analysis was performed by two trained researchers to identify themes.

Results

Five themes were identified: A Continuum of Offenses, Professional Growth through Adversity, Organizational Issues, Role of Colleagues, and Consequences for Provision of Care. Findings suggest that although attending physicians learned to cope with PPtP, the experience of being treated with bias negatively impacted their well-being and work performance. Attending physicians also felt that white majority medical students sometimes treated them with prejudice but expressed a commitment to protecting vulnerable trainees from PPtP.

Conclusion

The experience of PPtP occurs consistently throughout a career in medicine, often beginning in the years of training and persisting into the phase of attending status. This makes it imperative to include strategies that address PPtP in order to successfully recruit and retain minoritized physicians.

"You Look Young! Are You a Doctor?" A Qualitative Content Analysis of Anesthesiology Resident Responses to Ageism in Clinical Encounters

BACKGROUND

Healthcare trainees frequently report facing comments from their patients pertaining to their age. Exposure to ageist comments from patients may be related to greater stress and/or burnout in residents and may impact the quality of the resident-patient relationship. However, little empirical work has examined ageism expressed toward anesthesiology residents in clinical care, and therefore not much is known about how residents respond to these comments in practice. This research sought to determine how anesthesiology residents responded to ageist comments.

METHODS

Anesthesiology residents (N = 60) engaged in a preoperative interaction with a standardized patient who was instructed to make an ageist comment to the resident. Resident responses were transcribed and coded using qualitative inductive content analysis to identify response themes.

RESULTS

The most common resident response to the ageist comment, across gender and resident year, was to state their own experience. Some also described how they were still in training or that they were under supervision. Residents rarely reassured the patient that they would receive good care or identified the patient's anxiety as a cause of the ageist remark.

CONCLUSIONS

These results provide a first step in understanding how ageism may be navigated by residents in clinical encounters. The authors discuss potential avenues for future research and education for responding to ageist remarks for both patients and clinicians.

EDITOR’S PERSPECTIVE

From Eggshells to Action: A Qualitative Study of Faculty Experience Responding to Microaggressions Targeting Medical Students

PURPOSE

Microaggressions targeting clinical learners cause harm and threaten learning. Clinical supervisors can be powerful allies by intervening when microaggressions occur. This study explored general and student-nominated skilled supervisors' perspectives on responding to microaggressions targeting clinical learners.

METHOD

This single-institution, qualitative study within a constructivist paradigm explored faculty supervisor experiences with bystander response to microaggressions targeting learners. Clinical supervisors in medicine and surgery departments and those across departments nominated by students as skilled microaggression responders were invited to discuss microaggression scenarios targeting students in semistructured focus groups in the U.S. in 2020-2021. Investigators applied the framework method of thematic analysis to identify themes.

RESULTS

Forty-two faculty (31 medicine and surgery ["general"], 11 "student-nominated" as skilled responders) joined 10 focus groups (6 "general," 3 "student-nominated," 1 mixed). Four themes characterized experiences responding to microaggressions targeting learners: bystander goals, noticing, acting, and continuous learning. Participants' response goals were protecting learners, safeguarding learning, and teaching microaggression response skills. Noticing was influenced by past experiences with microaggressions and acculturation to clinical environments. Bystander action stemmed from (1) microaggression type, (2) personal emotional vulnerability, (3) knowledge of student preferences for supervisor response, and (4) clinical and educational context. Bystander action was more common when participants regarded all microaggressions as harmful, understood student preferences for faculty response, expected to err (growth mindset), and framed microaggressions as opportunities for humble reflection, intellectual candor, and teaching. Microaggression response required continuous learning through informal and formal skills development.

CONCLUSIONS

Complex factors govern faculty bystander response to microaggressions targeting clinical learners. Efforts to strengthen faculty bystander response should incorporate skill-building around preemptive discussions with learners and using intellectual candor to promote psychological safety, learning, and bystander action. Additional investigation is needed on how to incorporate these skills into team workflows and to assess outcomes of specific response strategies.

Physician Perspectives on Responding to Clinician-Perpetuated Interpersonal Racism Against Black Patients with Serious Illness

BACKGROUND

Racism negatively affects clinical outcomes in Black patients, but uncertainty remains among physicians regarding how to address interpersonal anti-Black racism incidences involving them to facilitate racial healing and promote accountability.

OBJECTIVE

Elicit physician perspectives on addressing concerns from Black patients about interpersonal racism involving them or their team.

PARTICIPANTS

Twenty-one physician subspecialists at an urban academic medical center.

APPROACH

We conducted one-on-one semi-structured interviews to help inform the development of a clinician-facing component of a program to address the distress of racism experienced by Black patients with serious illness. We asked clinicians to describe experiences discussing racism with patients and identify additional resources to support these conversations.

MAIN MEASURES

Physician perspectives, including barriers and facilitators, to promote racial healing and clinician accountability when discussing clinician-perpetuated interpersonal racism with Black patients.

KEY RESULTS

Of the 21 participating physicians, 67% were women with a mean age of 44.2 years and mean of 10.8 years of experience as an attending physician. Four identified as Asian, three identified as Black, and 14 identified as White. Participants largely felt unprepared to discuss racism with their patients, especially if the harm was caused by them or their team. Participants felt patients should be given tools to discuss concerns about racism with their clinicians, but worried about adding additional burdens to Black patients to call out racism. Participants believed programs and processes with both patient- and clinicians-facing components had the potential to empower patients while providing resources and tools for clinicians to engage in these highly sensitive discussions without perpetuating more harm.

CONCLUSIONS

Addressing and improving communication about interpersonal racism in clinical settings are challenging. Dual-facing programs involving patients and clinicians may help provide additional resources to address experiences of interpersonal racism and hold clinicians accountable.

Discrimination 911: A Novel Response Framework to Teach Bystanders to Become Upstanders When Facing Microaggressions

PROBLEM

Microaggressions are pervasive in daily life, including in undergraduate and graduate medical education and across health care settings. The authors created a response framework (i.e., a series of algorithms) to help bystanders (i.e., health care team members) become upstanders when witnessing discrimination by the patient or patient's family toward colleagues at the bedside during patient care, Texas Children's Hospital, August 2020 to December 2021.

APPROACH

Similar to a medical "code blue," microaggressions in the context of patient care are foreseeable yet unpredictable, emotionally jarring, and often high-stakes. Modeled after algorithms for medical resuscitations, the authors used existing literature to create a series of algorithms, called Discrimination 911, to teach individuals how to intervene as an upstander when witnessing instances of discrimination. The algorithms "diagnose" the discriminatory act, provide a process to respond with scripted language, and subsequently support a colleague who was targeted. The algorithms are accompanied by training on communication skills and diversity, equity, and inclusion principles via a 3-hour workshop that includes didactics and iterative role play. The algorithms were designed in the summer of 2020 and refined through pilot workshops throughout 2021.

OUTCOMES

As of August 2022, 5 workshops have been conducted with 91 participants who also completed the post-workshop survey. Eighty (88%) participants reported witnessing discrimination from a patient or patient's family toward a health care professional, and 89 (98%) participants stated that they would use this training to make changes in their practice.

NEXT STEPS

The next phase of the project will involve continued dissemination of the workshop and algorithms as well as developing a plan to obtain follow-up data in an incremental fashion to assess for behavior change. To reach this goal, the authors have considered changing the format of the training and are planning to train additional facilitators.

Anti-Black racism in clinical supervision: asynchronous simulated encounters facilitate reflective practice

Background Racist interactions in clinical practice remain a pervasive reality for Black healthcare providers. We sought to develop a framework to inform supervisors' actions when confronting racism in clinical practice and protecting trainees under their oversight. Methods We conducted a qualitative study in which experienced supervisors responded to seven short, videotaped interactions between: 1) Black trainees and a simulated patient (SP) in a racist role; 2) the trainees and their respective supervisors; and 3) the trainees and their supervisors together with the SP. The clinical exchanges exemplified different types of racist (entrenching) or antiracist (uprooting) behaviors by the supervisors. After viewing each clip, participants wrote their reflections confidentially; they later joined a structured debriefing together. We used thematic analysis to identify supervisors' behavioral patterns when confronting racist interactions. Results Based on the input of 52 participants recruited into five two-hour-long sessions, we categorized the behaviors of supervisors facing anti-Black racial injuries involving learners under their oversight. We organized supervisor behaviors into five interlocking domains, each with a range of possible themes: 1) Joining: from conciliatory to confrontational in communicating with the aggressor; 2) Explicitness: from avoiding to naming racism; 3) Ownership: from individual to shared responsibility of the event and the response to it; 4) Involving: from excusing to including the aggrieved party when confronting the aggressor; and 5) Stance: from protective to paternalistic in supporting the learner's autonomy. Conclusions Our qualitative findings can provide a framework for facilitated discussion toward reflective practice among healthcare providers who may have experienced, witnessed, or intervened in anti-Black racist interactions. They can also help medical educators to inform faculty development to fight anti-Black racism in clinical practice. The video materials we developed are available for viewing and download and can be used or adapted as springboards for reflective discussion or faculty development activities.

Anti-Black racism in clinical supervision: asynchronous simulated encounters facilitate reflective practice

Background Racist interactions in clinical practice remain a pervasive reality for Black healthcare providers. We sought to develop a framework to inform supervisors’ actions when confronting racism in clinical practice and protecting trainees under their oversight. Methods We conducted a prospective study in which experienced supervisors responded to seven short, videotaped interactions between: 1) Black trainees and a simulated patient (SP) in a racist role; 2) the trainees and their respective supervisors; and 3) the trainees and their supervisors together with the SP. The clinical exchanges exemplified different types of racist (entrenching) or antiracist (uprooting) behaviors by the supervisors. After viewing each clip, participants wrote their reflections confidentially; they later joined a structured debriefing together. We used thematic analysis to identify supervisors’ behavioral patterns when confronting racist interactions. Results Based on the input of 52 participants recruited into five two-hour-long sessions, we categorized the behaviors of supervisors facing anti-Black racial injuries involving learners under their oversight. We organized supervisor behaviors into five interlocking domains, each with a range of possible themes: 1) Joining: from conciliatory to confrontational in communicating with the aggressor; 2) Explicitness: from avoiding to naming racism; 3) Ownership: from individual to shared responsibility of the event and the response to it; 4) Involving: from excusing to including the aggrieved party when confronting the aggressor; and 5) Stance: from protective to paternalistic in supporting the learner’s autonomy. Conclusions Our qualitative findings can provide a framework for facilitated discussion toward reflective practice among healthcare providers who may have experienced, witnessed, or intervened in anti-Black racist interactions. They can also help medical educators to inform faculty development to fight anti-Black racism in clinical practice. The video materials we developed are available for viewing and download and can be used or adapted as springboards for reflective discussion or faculty development activities.

Is there a role for ethics in addressing healthcare incivility?

In a healthcare setting, a multitude of ethical and moral challenges are often present when patients and families direct uncivil behavior toward clinicians and staff. These negative interactions may elicit strong social and emotional reactions among staff, other patients, and visitors; and they may impede the normal functioning of an institution. Ethics Committees and Clinical Ethics Consultation Services (CECSs) can meaningfully contribute to organizational efforts to effectively manage incivility through two distinct, yet inter-related channels. First, given their responsibility to promote a humane, respectful, and professional climate, many CECSs and Ethics Committees may assist institutional leadership in evaluating and monitoring incivility policies and procedures. Second, when confronted with individual incidents of patient/family incivility, Ethics Consultants can and often do work with all stakeholders to address and mitigate potentially deleterious impacts. This manuscript presents an overview of the multifaceted ethical implications of incivility in the healthcare environment, discusses the inherent qualifications of Ethics Consultants for assisting in the management of incivility, and proposes specific mitigating actions within the purview of CECSs and Ethics Committees. We also invite healthcare organizations to harness the skills and reputation of their CECSs and Ethics Committees in confronting incivility through comprehensive policies, procedures, and training.

Addressing Mistreatment by Patients in Geriatric Subspecialties: A New Framework

Mistreatment by patients is unfortunately common in clinical medicine, including geriatric subspecialties. Despite the prevalence of this problem, there are few standardized approaches for addressing it at both interpersonal and institutional levels. The "ERASE" framework is a novel, practical approach for addressing mistreatment by patients. "ERASE" includes Expecting and preparing for mistreatment by patients, Recognizing mistreatment, Addressing mistreatment in real time, Supporting members of the healthcare team who have been mistreated, and Establishing a positive institutional culture. The framework may prove particularly helpful and applicable to providers specializing in geriatrics and can be used by administrators, educators, and all members of the healthcare team to promote safe, dignified clinical care and learning environments.

Structural Racism and Psychiatric Practice: A Call for Sustained Change

ABSTRACT

Structural racism has received renewed focus over the past year, fueled by the convergence of major political and social events. Psychiatry as a field has been forced to confront a legacy of systemic inequities. Here, we use examples from our clinical and supervisory work to highlight the urgent need to integrate techniques addressing racial identity and racism into psychiatric practice and teaching. This urgency is underlined by extensive evidence of psychiatry's long-standing systemic inequities. We argue that our field suffers not from a lack of available techniques, but rather a lack of sustained commitment to understand and integrate those techniques into our work; indeed, there are multiple published examples of strategies to address racism and racial identity in psychiatric clinical practice. We conclude with recommendations geared toward more firmly institutionalizing a focus on racism and racial identity in psychiatry, and suggest applications of existing techniques to our initial clinical examples.

Resident Physician Experiences With and Responses to Biased Patients

IMPORTANCE

Biased patient behavior negatively impacts resident well-being. Data on the prevalence and frequency of these encounters are lacking and are needed to guide the creation of institutional trainings and policies to support trainees.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the frequency of resident experiences with and responses to a range of biased patient behaviors.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

A retrospective survey was sent via email to 331 second- and third-year internal medicine residents from 3 academic medical centers in California and North Carolina. First-year residents were excluded owing to their limited interactions with patients at the time of participant recruitment. Data were collected from August 21 to November 25, 2019.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

Descriptive statistics were used to report the frequency of experience of various types of biased patient behavior, residents' responses, the factors impeding residents' responses, and residents' experiences and beliefs regarding training and policies.

RESULTS

Overall, 232 of 331 residents (70%) participated; 116 (50%) were women; 116 of 247 (47%) were White (participants had the option of selecting >1 race/ethnicity); and 23 (10%) identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. The frequency of resident-reported experience of types of biased patient behaviors varied. The most common behaviors-belittling comments and assumption of nonphysician status-were reported to be experienced 1 or more times per week by 14% of residents (32 of 231) and 17% of residents (38 of 230), respectively. Women, Black or Latinx, and Asian residents reported experiencing biased behavior more frequently. Forty-five percent of Black or Latinx residents (17 of 38) encountered instances of explicit epithets or rejection of care. All 70 Asian residents reported experiencing inquiries into their ethnic origins. Most women residents (110 of 115 [96%]) experienced role questioning behaviors, and 87% (100 of 115) experienced sexual harassment. The need to prioritize clinical care and a sense of futility in responding were the most common factors (cited by 34% of residents [76 of 227] and 25% of residents [56 of 227], respectively) significantly impeding responses to biased behaviors. Eighty-five percent of residents (191 of 226) never reported incidents to their institution. Eighty-nine percent of residents (206 of 232) identified training and policies as necessary or very necessary.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

This survey study suggests that biased patient behavior is experienced frequently by internal medicine residents. Non-White and women residents reported experiencing a disproportionate burden of these incidents. Residents' responses rarely included institutional involvement. Residency programs and health care systems should prioritize training and policies to address biased patient behavior and support affected residents.

Strategies of Female Teaching Attending Physicians to Navigate Gender-Based Challenges: An Exploratory Qualitative Study

BACKGROUND

Women in medicine experience discrimination, hostility, and unconscious bias frequently and with deleterious effects. While these gender-based challenges are well described, strategies to navigate and respond to them are less understood.

OBJECTIVE

To explore the lived experiences of female teaching attending physicians emphasizing strategies they use to mitigate gender-based challenges in clinical environments.

DESIGN

Multisite exploratory, qualitative study.

SETTING

Inpatient general medicine teaching rounds in six geographically diverse US academic hospitals between April and August 2018.

PARTICIPANTS

With use of a modified snowball sampling approach, female attendings and their learners were identified; six female attendings and their current (n = 24) and former (n = 17) learners agreed to participate.

MEASUREMENTS

Perceptions of gender-based challenges in clinical teaching environments and strategies with which to respond to these challenges were evaluated through semistructured in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and direct observations of rounds. Observations were documented using handwritten field notes. Interviews and focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed. All transcripts and field note data were analyzed using a content analysis approach.

MAIN OUTCOMES

Attending experience levels ranged from 8 to 20 years (mean, 15.3 years). Attendings were diverse in terms of race/ethnicity. Strategic approaches to gender-based challenges clustered around three themes: female attendings (1) actively position themselves as physician team leaders, (2) consciously work to manage gender-based stereotypes and perceptions, and (3) intentionally identify and embrace their unique qualities.

CONCLUSION

Female attendings manage their roles as women in medicine through specific strategies to both navigate complex gender dynamics and role model approaches for learners.

A Framework for Inclusive Graduate Medical Education Recruitment Strategies: Meeting the ACGME Standard for a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce

To help address health care disparities and promote higher-quality, culturally sensitive care in the United States, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and other governing bodies propose cultivating a more diverse physician workforce. In addition, improved training and patient outcomes have been demonstrated for diverse care teams. However, prioritizing graduate medical education (GME) diversity and inclusion efforts can be challenging and unidimensional diversity initiatives typically result in failure.Little literature exists regarding actionable steps to promote diversity in GME. Building on existing literature and the authors' experiences at different institutions, the authors propose a 5-point inclusive recruitment framework for diversifying GME training programs. This article details each of the 5 steps of the framework, which begins with strong institutional support by setting diversity as a priority. Forming a cycle, the other 4 steps are seeking out candidates, implementing inclusive recruitment practices, investing in trainee success, and building the pipeline. Practical strategies for each step and recommendations for measurable outcomes for continued support for this work are provided. The proposed framework may better equip colleagues and leaders in academic medicine to prioritize and effectively promote diversity and inclusion in GME at their respective institutions.