Bias, Stereotypes, and Implicit Bias

Bias, Stereotypes, and Implicit Bias NameInstitutionInstructorCourseDate Bias, Stereotypes, and Implicit Bias Bias, stereotypes, and implicit bias are important aspects in the provision of healthcare services as they may influence the success of achieving healthcare goals. This makes it important for healthcare practitioners to understand these aspects and how to address issues related to the aspects (Maurer & Smith, 2014). Implicit bias involves the attitudes that affect individuals’ understanding and actions that occur unconsciously. Bias on the other hand is an inclination or favor for one group or individual as well as prejudice against another group or individual (Maurer & Smith, 2014). Stereotypes are individuals’ perceptions or their beliefs about certain individuals or cultural groups. Since all individuals are not similar, community health nurses should be able to recognize bias, stereotypes, and implicit bias within the community that can be achieved by being culturally competent (Maurer & Smith, 2014). This will help them in recognizing the needs of different community members which will avoid unequal provision of healthcare among different members of the community. This will also prevent nurses in being biased toward some of the community members (FitzGerald & Hurst, 2017). Another way to recognize bias, stereotypes, and implicit bias within a community is their response to the healthcare practitioners which is determined through their relationship with the nurses (FitzGerald & Hurst, 2017). Different community members’ assumptions on certain health-related issues is a also a factor to consider in identifying bias, stereotypes, and implicit bias. There are different strategies that a nurse can use to address these concepts to ensure that health promotion activities are culturally competent (FitzGerald & Hurst, 2017). One of these strategies is through facilitated discussions with community members in an aim of promoting literacy in these concepts and their effect on healthcare delivery. This will help in minimizing bias and stereotyping among community nurses (Jongen, McCalman, Bainbridge, & Clifford, 2018). Promoting self-awareness among other health workers will also enable them to understand how these concepts affect the delivery of healthcare within different communities (Jongen et al., 2018). Self-awareness will also improve their relationship with the community members, as they will be able to understand the attitudes and other cultural aspects of the community members. This will prevent negative judgments on certain community groups that may be based on stereotypes (Jongen et al., 2018). One of the strategies that can be employed to reduce cultural dissonance and bias to deliver culturally competent care include recognizing unconscious bias and stereotyping. This is the first step and most important step as it helps in making effective decisions that are fair to everyone (Jongen et al., 2018). The second strategy may involve training the healthcare workers on self-mentoring programs that are aimed at motivating them on adopting evidence-based practices to reduce cultural dissonance and bias (Maurer & Smith, 2014). Collecting feedback from the community members is also important in evaluating the overall perception of the community that can be done through community surveys and questionnaires. This process will encourage active participation by community members which will help in identifying any diversity issues that can be addressed through a collaborative decision-making process (Maurer & Smith, 2014). ReferencesFitzGerald, C., & Hurst, S. (2017). Implicit Bias In Healthcare Professionals: a systematic review. BMC medical ethics, 18(1), 19. Jongen, C., McCalman, J., Bainbridge, R., & Clifford, A. (2018). Cultural Competence in Health: A Review of the Evidence. Singapore: Springer.Maurer, F. A., & Smith, C. M. (2014). Community/Public Health Nursing Practice: Health for Families and Populations. Elsevier. Saunders.