Addressing Biases in Patient Care with The 5Rs of Cultural Humility, a Clinician Coaching Tool

• Published in: Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM 2019-04, Vol.34 (4), p.627-630
• Main Authors: Masters, Christie, Robinson, Dea, Faulkner, Sally, Patterson, Eltanya, McIlraith, Thomas, Ansari, Aziz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Coaching; Decision making; Internal Medicine; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mindfulness; Patients; Perspective; Reflection; Resilience; Society
• ISSN: 0884-8734; 1525-1497
• DOI: 10.1007/s11606-018-4814-y

Clinicians are called to care for patients with increasingly diverse backgrounds during vulnerable moments when gaining trust is imperative. Simultaneously, implicit or unconscious biases are omnipresent. Guidance for clinicians in addressing and curtailing implicit biases is a necessity to preserve provider resiliency while providing high-value, patient-centered care. However, tools to aid clinicians in this endeavor are unknown. The following article introduces The 5Rs of Cultural Humility (5Rs) as a coaching tool available to all clinicians, leaders, and administrators. It is a tool that brings awareness to the reality that everyone has implicit biases and provides a platform to address these biases through the use of cultural humility, mindfulness, and compassion. The tool encourages the clinician to become more aware of his or her decision-making and interactions with others. Each R includes an aim at reducing biases and a self-reflection question. The 5Rs are reflection, respect, regard, relevance, and resiliency. The framework of the 5Rs presents an approach for clinicians to explore more mindful interactions and enriching patient-provider interactions.