Hi folks, I'll be speaking about this at the Futurist Forum and I'm excited. For a while now this has been bouncing around my head and I'm glad to share the conundrum. My background is motivation psychology, so it's been known to me since undergrad that financial incentives are among the WEAKEST and most fragile motivators of behaviour. Thus it's been funny to me that so much emphasis is placed on mitigating it, to almost the complete exclusion or discussion of other potential infiltrations of bias. What are the kinds of biases that you see in your practice? I'd love to chat with y'all about these.
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Hello Terry. I think that bias is so varied in our world. Their are so many clear bias's in politics (think lobbyists) but no one seems to care - yet in CME we are held to a much higher standard - under the new ACCME standards for commercial support many pharmacy benefit managers are prohibited from serving as faculty because they are part owners of the companies they work for. Really?
Hello Terry, thanks for asking this thought provoking question. Having a background in philosophy makes me ponder over what bias actually is. Actually, I fear that the very term bias itself encompasses deep misunderstanding about how we see the world. It makes us believe that we can have an unbiased accurate representation of what is the case. I do not think that that is so. Obviously, in lay language, if you talk about prejudice, error, or stakes, I do think in health care there are many elephants in the room: money, hierarchy, power, and then there are all kinds of -isms like racism, ableism, healthism, ageism, etc. The question should maybe not be about the biases that we see, but about becoming better in dialogue to address perspective differences respectively and towards progress...
Hello Terry,
Thank you for posting here and I am interested in learning more about how you see bias. I agree that bias in medical education has been focused on financial concerns mostly, particularly in the US and with the ACCME. I see many potential biases that can impact presenters at continuing medical education. A presenter can be an expert in an area of medicine, but the audience has to critically evaluate their background (degrees, academic institutions, clinical appointments, and professional associations) as well as their research and publications. Understanding the breadth of their expertise will help in accepting what they are discussing.