Objective:

Background:

Bias in medical education leads to inequity in student grading for those who identify with a marginalized racial/ethnic group. Although numerous studies document this problem, strategies to counteract bias remain a topic of active inquiry.

Design/Methods:

Students who rotated on the Neurology clerkship between 2018-2020 completed an anonymous needs assessment survey focused on race/ethnicity, clerkship grade, and experiences of bias and/or stereotype threat. Using Kern’s framework of curricular development, we designed a 90-minute faculty workshop, dedicating 30 minutes to educating with descriptive statistics and exemplar quotes from student survey results and 60 minutes to discussion exercises. Effectiveness of the workshop was evaluated through (1) student surveys administered during the 2020-2022 academic years in tandem with curriculum rollout, and (2) a post-session faculty survey assessing participant knowledge and awareness. 

Results:

55 students (response rate = 28%) completed our needs assessment survey, and our follow-up survey was completed by 108 students (response rate = 50%). 23.6% of students in the initial survey reported they felt their evaluation was “moderately” or “considerably” influenced by bias versus 6.5% in the follow-up survey. In the initial survey, 46.2% of individuals who identified with a race/ethnic background marginalized in medicine reported experiencing “moderate” or “considerable” stereotype threat that impacted their clerkship performance, versus 15% in the follow-up survey. 35 of 58 faculty responded to our survey after the initial workshop (response rate = 60%). 40% “never” or “rarely” considered the impact of bias on clerkship students, and 74% could not recall any witnessed specific examples of bias over the last year.

Conclusions:

We successfully created and implemented a workshop to educate faculty on the impact of racial/ethnic bias on clerkship students, and have seen early success on student perception.