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| author | Catherine Burns Konefal |
| title | Strengthening Ethical Boundaries by Understanding How Implicit Bias Affects Ethical Decision-Making: A Review of the Guatemala Study |
| abstract | Systemic healthcare disparities in the United States are exacerbated and medical transgressions often occur when biomedical
professionals cross ethical boundaries. Biomedicine's embrace of paternalism and patient objectification, along with its simultaneous diminishment of empathy, are at
odds with ethical decision-making and the sound formation of ethical boundaries. Physicians and researchers should be conversant with the human suffering incurred by
past ethical miscalculations and the factors that contributed to the "acceptability" of the hardship incurred, such as social, racial, and cultural bias. Pedagogical
approaches that include examination of ethical breaches from the victim's perspective and require students to reflect on their biases after taking the Race Implicit
Association Test (IAT) would keenly illustrate the role that bias, both conscious and unconscious, has in establishing ethical boundaries and in defining an acceptable
utilitarian outcome. Ethical training that instills the importance of awareness, self-reflection, and empathy, and calls physicians to use patient gaze--framing
practice around a fellow human being, not a disease--will reflexively define the ethical acceptability of decisions made by physicians and an acceptable utilitarian
outcome: that is, an outcome where all patients are treated equally, not like a number in a grander calculation. This dissertation includes a course,
"Understanding Implicit Bias and Healthcare Disparities in the United States: A Review of the Guatemala Study," which is a pedagogical template for preparing students
to seamlessly apply the skills associated with the Ethics of Care--compassion, empathy, imaginative awareness, humility, and discernment--as well as steadfastly
mitigate their personal biases in a manner that complements medical practice's focus on "doing." |
| school | The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, Drew University |
| degree | D.M.H. (2017) |
| advisor | Richard Marfuggi |
| committee | Kate Ott |
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