Confronting Prejudice and Discrimination: 13 - Addressing bias in healthcare: Confrontation as a tool for bias reduction and patient and provider self-advocacy

The individual biases of health-care providers may be one contributor to the persistence of health disparities. Evidence suggests that health-care professionals, like members of the broader community, hold implicit biases, and furthermore that these biases are related to the quality of doctor–patient interactions. In this chapter, we propose that patient confrontation of physician bias may serve as a self-advocacy tool that reduces physician bias and improves quality of patient care. We discuss unique challenges and considerations for effective confrontation in the health-care setting. We also discuss the possibility of confrontation as a strategy that health-care providers may use to reduce expressions of bias from their patients. Finally, we discuss evidence on whether confrontation-based training effectively reduces bias in this setting.