Results of a meta-study suggest that most implicit bias training for healthcare providers has flawed methodology

A small team of psychologists and public health specialists from the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Old Dominion University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found, through analyzing data from multiple studies, that most implicit bias training efforts suffer from flawed methodology and translational gaps that compromise their integrity.

In their article, published in the journal Scientific progressThe group notes that there is little scientific evidence that such training programs lead to a reduction in bias.

Implicit bias is defined as a type of learned stereotype that is automatic in a given individual, typically associative, involuntary, and usually deeply ingrained.

Previous research has shown that implicit bias can influence behavior, such as paying less attention to pregnant black women in health care settings due to unconscious, stereotypical beliefs that black women tend to complain more when they encounter “normal” problems. Such behavioral biases have been shown to lead to a higher percentage of adverse outcomes in black women during pregnancy and childbirth than in white women.

Over the past few decades, the healthcare industry has studied implicit bias and found it to be problematic. So, it has sought to address bias in healthcare settings through what has become known as “implicit bias training.”

In this new study, the research team found evidence suggesting that many of these training programs use techniques that have no scientific basis, a finding that suggests that many health care institutions or facilities are only providing a superficial response to the problem rather than trying to solve it.

The researchers analyzed 77 studies conducted between January 2003 and September 2022 that focused on implicit bias training for health professionals. As part of this effort, they examined how bias training programs were designed and implemented, whether there were gaps in knowledge transfer, and if so, whether they tended to decrease the reliability and/or reduce the validity of the training.

The results showed that the studies had little scientific evidence to support these efforts. They also found little evidence to suggest that these training efforts have a significant impact on the people who took them. They found no measurable impact on behavioral changes among people who participated in implicit training programs.

© 2024 Science X Network