Oftentimes a roadblock to people’s healing is dealing with unconscious bias in the medical system. This is a topic that is often avoided because of its controversial nature. Learn how we all have unconscious bias/implicit bias, how to identify our bias and make a change. Join the conversation with Dr. Lara and Dr. White as they share their experiences as medical students, as doctors in practice as it relates to unconscious bias in the medical system. Unconscious bias can impact many people in obtaining the proper medical help. Here are some references on implicit bias tests that can help you identify those “unconscious biases” you are not aware of:
Project Implicit:
https://www.projectimplicit.net/
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatouchtestv2.html
Dr. Iasha White’s Bio: Dr. Iasha White is an Arizona Native, she holds a Doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine from Sonoran University. Dr. White received extensive education and training in the areas of nutrition, botanical medicine, IV therapy and acupuncture. She enjoys helping people who have autoimmune conditions, like rheumatoid arthritis, hormone imbalances, gastrointestinal issues, high blood pressure, diabetes and much more. Dr. White’s goal is to empower her patients while guiding them to the highest quality of health; where the mind and body are harmonized allowing her patients to realize their highest potential. If you like to reach out to Dr. White email her at Dr.iashawhite@outlook.com
Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole person approach to your well-being, spirit, soul, and body. Join me your host, Dr. Ana Lara, a naturopathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m Dr. Anna Lara, and this is episode 13. I’m going to tell you this is a red alert. This is controversial information we’re going to discuss today. We’re going to talk about unconscious bias, racism, discrimination, and injustice in the medical system, and we’re going to have a real talk today with Dr. Aisha White naturopathic medical doctor. Before I bring her on, I want to read her bio. Dr. White is an Arizona native. She holds a doctorate in naturopathic medicine from Sonora University.
Dr. White received extensive education and training in the areas of nutrition, botanical medicine, IV therapy, and acupuncture. She enjoys helping people who have autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, hormone imbalances, gastrointestinal issues, high blood pressure, diabetes, and much more. Dr. White’s goal is to empower her patients while guiding them to the highest quality of health where the mind and body are harmonized, allowing her patients to realize their highest potential. I want to tell you, that not only is she a colleague of mine, but I consider her a dear friend of mine. We went through medical school together. Please help me welcome Dr. Aisha White.
Good morning. I am Dr. White. I am again a naturopathic physician based out of Phoenix, Arizona. I’m a mother of two little babies, one of which I had in medical school, of which was a gift, but also a strong learning lesson for me. I currently practice in Chandler, Arizona, and I have been practicing for about seven years now. But I love what I do. I love my patients, I love my colleagues, and I think this has been the greatest experience of my life.
It sure has been an amazing experience. Thank you for sharing that. Tell us why did you decide, before we go into the conversation because we’re going to talk about a lot of things, but why did you decide to become a naturopathic doctor versus anything else that you could have been in the world?
Yeah, okay. So as a child, I actually wanted to be several types of doctors from neurologists, cardiologists, and anesthesiologists, and I finally landed on becoming a midwife, I’m sorry, not a midwife, but practicing obstetrics and gynecology. I don’t know if you recall, but back in the day, I shouldn’t say back in the day. That sounds like forever ago. It seems good though. It’s true. So there was a program on Discovery Health Channel, and Discovery Health Channel had birthday episodes where they would show women giving birth. And so it was all about the birthing process. And so you see women coming in, they’re in labor, and you see the trend of giving Pitocin, hooking them up with IVs, and just the process of having a baby in the hospital. And so for me it didn’t sit right. Interestingly, I didn’t know anything about naturopathic medicine.
I didn’t know that we had a school in Arizona. I truly don’t know how I found SCNM, not sure at all. But when I found out that there was a naturopathic medical school and it aligned more so with me and who I am, I had to take that opportunity because I did not like the idea of giving medicine to start delivery. I didn’t like the idea of medicine surrounding birth. And to me, it made it more artificial in a way, which might sound weird, but I preferred the more natural approach where there were fewer interventions. I felt that when I had my own babies, I did not want to put myself through that, and so I could not put my patients through that as well. So I thought naturopathic medical school was better in a sense for me based on who I am.
So originally it was like you wanted to help women in the birthing process, but you wanted to do that, honor that process, and do it in a natural way.
Yes.
Yeah, that makes sense. Which is not what we see now. I mean, there’s more of a movement now of women and families wanting to go this natural way. Somewhere in history, this whole experience has been hijacked and became a medical intervention. And not to say that there may be times that we may need medical intervention, but not every woman needs it. And if we educated women on the whole experience, then there would be less need for medical interventions. In my experience, my mom, I’ll have to say this, had nine children, seven of those children she birthed at home when she was in Mexico,
And me and my younger brother, we were born here, and she always said that her most difficult deliveries were the ones she had in this country because the nurses and the doctors wanted to tell her when it was time to push and to hold on. And she’s like, no, this baby is ready to come out. So I mean, it’s a very different experience when you’ve had seven children on your own and then you’re in a hospital and everyone is in your face. Now, let’s talk about this because of what my mother experienced when she gave birth to me, I believe it was a manifest destiny to happen that way too, because what are the chances that my mom is giving birth in a hospital for the first time in her life after having seven children, and she knows it’s time for me to come out, but the nurses are like, hold on, not time me yet the doctor’s not here. And my mom’s like, I don’t care if the doctor’s here, the baby is coming. And I was just quickly born in the moment. And here I am a doctor talking about unconscious bias, racism, discrimination, and injustice in the medical system. So I want to define what these unconscious biases are, and we’re going to just dive in into the conversation.
So it’s also known as implicit bias or subconscious bias, and this refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding of actions and decisions in an unconscious manner. That means you don’t know you’re doing this. These biases which encompass both favorable and unfavorable assessments are activated involuntarily and without an individual’s awareness or intentional control. That’s the key thing there. And I’m just going to preface to say that we all have unconscious bias, all of us, I don’t care what race and gender, what your background is, we all have them. That’s the problem is that we are not aware of what these things are until they surface. And so we really decide also to, we decide that we don’t want to be judging people off of these unconscious biases.
And so we make the effort to identify what they are. So I want to go into, because we have these conversations all the time, me and Dr. White, and the reason this conversation actually came up was because as we are recording this, what’s today? July 13th? It’s July 13th, so this episode won’t get aired for a couple of months, but a month ago, my father who passed away on Father’s Day this year, he had been in the hospital in and out for most of this year of 2024. And in the last month, there was a lot of issues that were happening in the hospital. And because they saw this older Man, Hispanic, Mexican descent, hard of hearing, and he doesn’t speak English, he understands it, he doesn’t speak English.
There are a lot of cultural and language barriers there. And I could see that although the nurses, they were nice, the doctors were nice, they were not racist. I can see that they’re not, but there’s a lot of unconscious bias that they are not aware of, that they’re making these judgments and not fully assessing and asking the individual the particular questions and giving them, delivering the right medical care that they deserve. So had I not been present, Dr. White, I really believe that they would’ve even further dropped the ball on his healthcare because I was there advocating for him, and other family members were there advocating for him. So that’s the problem with all of that is that you’re just not aware. Totally, totally. So let’s talk about this experience as we’re both women, and African-American. I’m a Mexican descent, and we go into this naturopathic medical school and we think it’s all going to be kumbaya. Everything’s different from the world outside because it is a different naturopathic medicine. It is different than a conventional medical school.
There is this sense of community, and we want to help people address the root causes of illness. We really want to help people on a much, much, much deeper level, not just the physical body, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually. But we walked in and quickly, at least from my experience, I came across this wall that I was not expecting to encounter in this community. And I know some of our colleagues might watch this or people from the school, and that’s okay, this is our experience. They might have a different experience, but no one can ever say that our experience is not valid. So I want to hear from your perspective, what was your experience when you walked, when we were in medical school from the beginning and throughout the program?
Yeah, so it’s interesting because I think what you said is really important. It’s not expected. You walk into this environment and in a way it is like, okay, this is going to be kumbaya because we’re naturopathic doctors, we’re becoming naturopathic doctors, and these are open-minded people. These are loving people. You think, okay, open-minded, loving. They have a different approach to life, and so they’re not going to be just everyday people. And so I think my experience, it is weird because it’s definitely that unconscious or implicit bias that exists because it’s that subtleness that people don’t know that they have these biases. And so you go into naturopathic medical school and you’re expecting it to be a certain way, but then you quickly realize, okay, there are certain leniencies that these other individuals may have that we don’t have because we’re people of color. And so for me, I think I’ve always been able to analyze things in a way to allow myself to get ahead strictly because I know what’s expected of me, which is very common.
I feel like with people of color, we know that we’re going to have it a little bit more difficult, and we know that we have to walk a very straight line in a way, which I’m iffy about lines, but you try to walk a very straight narrow line because you know that you’re not going to have these other opportunities and you’re not going to be able to take whatever chances other people may be able to take. And so for me, it’s like I knew that I had to become really good. I had to become really good at studying and become really good at taking tests. And I knew that some individuals may be able to retake exams or retake courses, but that’s not available for me. So that’s not even an option. I just have to hunker down and do what I need to do. And so for me, I’ve seen that in school. I’ve seen where individuals could, or you’ll hear about it because a very small community, everyone talks.
So when someone may not pass a test or a class, and you knew when an individual had the opportunity to retake and you knew when an individual did not have an opportunity to retake, and generally that discrepancy was based on color. And so it was as though the people who were of color just did not have the same opportunities.
And so I saw that there. I feel like I saw it, and it’s not that I’ve seen it outright when I had my son in school, but I had my son third-year medical school. I planned to have him naturally, but I had five days of night labor. A cord was wrapped around. And so I ended up having a C-section with my son. I did not even consider, never considered not showing up to take finals because finals was the next week of school. And so for me, it’s like, okay, I just had a c-section, major abdominal surgery. I have a newborn baby. That was a whole experience even in itself, having him dealing with the nurses and the doctors. And so I never even thought to say, Hey, can I wait to take these exams? Am There was, I think one or two doctors who reached out to me. Interestingly, they were minorities as well, and they gave me the opportunity, but I never asked and I never expected it. But I think that’s very common.
Absolutely. I and I just want our audience to know that these are the conversations that need to happen and we need to listen to them. We really need to listen to them because it might be difficult for someone who’s white and has that, there’s all this debate online about white privilege. It’s not to make anyone feel bad is just that these are the unconscious biases that happen in our society in all areas.
And so as uncomfortable as the conversation needs is, it needs to happen. So you might be asking, why are we talking about unconscious biases and racism and discrimination in the medical system? Because part of this podcast is to educate and empower people to find healing. And it’s very difficult for people in minority communities to find the right help, to be heard, to be provided the same opportunities and options.
And if you’re constantly under stress and you’re going to the provider who’s supposed to help you, and you feel like there’s a barrier there, you can’t heal. You can’t heal physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever it is. So it is a big roadblock, a huge roadblock in many communities when it comes to getting the right medical help. So that’s why as uncomfortable as it is, and one thing I want to point out, that everything you’ve said, it’s not coming from a victim. My mentality, sometimes I hear that as the offset of, oh, you’re just making yourself a victim. You’re using the race card. No, that’s not, this is reality. I kind of say I have a little bit of white privilege because even though I’m of Mexican descent, sometimes people don’t know I’m Mexican until I say it, or they hear maybe an accent in me or I start speaking Spanish. But other than that, I have a little bit of that white privilege of people not knowing what I am. So until I disclose that. So something you said that I can completely relate to, and I remember every single teacher while I was in elementary school telling me, telling the whole class, it was predominantly Mexican, not even Hispanic. It was Mexican or you’re African American. That was it.
The white people were the minority in our school. There was maybe a handful of in the whole elementary school of white students, so they would get some of the treatment that you and I might get in a different circle.
So they were the minority. But I remember many teachers telling us, and whether this was good or not, I mean you could look at it in different perspectives, but I remember a lot of teachers telling us, you’re going to have to work a lot harder and you’re going to have to walk a fine line because the world out there has already these preconceived ideas about you, about what you’re going to do. So interestingly, me and Dr. White are both from South Phoenix. What are the odds of two people from South Phoenix who never met South Phoenix is known for its gangs, its drugs, the violence over the years now it’s nice, but back in the eighties and nineties, it wasn’t. And so that we met in medical school the same year, the same class we graduated together, it was like, what an honor to have someone else within my community that understands that we have a similar upbringing. So we can relate different perspectives, different experiences maybe, but we can still relate on this common ground. So a lot of these teachers would tell us that. And here’s the thing is statistically you and I should have been teenage moms, dropouts, maybe never even made it to high school, much less make it to college or become doctors beyond on drugs, be in prison, be in a gang, because girls were in gangs.
So we had all of the statistics that in our time in our area said, this is what’s expected of someone of African-American descent or of Mexican descent. But we beat the odds, and I know that that was God’s hand over our life totally. To say, I’m going to take a nobody of what society might see us as a nobody, and I’m going to make them into somebody to help my people.
I think too, when they bring up the victim mentality, I think it’s important because I think that where we are, I think that our mindset as well, even in medical school, it’s like you might fall at certain times, but you would be a victim if you just laid there, right? And you said, oh, I’m failing and I can’t get up. Oh, poor me. But I think for us, and I know for me, I do have an analytical mind, and we were told about statistics in elementary school, and so you’re going to be a statistic. These are the statistics. This is a likelihood of you becoming successful. But they also told us that in medical school. And so it was interesting for me given my personality because, and I’m going to tell a story. Our very first test in medical school.
I remember.
Okay, I didn’t know what to expect. I probably studied a good two hours total first test in medical school. Who does that? Who does that? I didn’t pass. I think I got a D. I got a D, right? And so I think everyone who did not do well on that first test, they had to sit down with the dean. Was it the dean? It was someone. And they gave the statistics about them passing boards and everything else. And I just sat there and I looked at this guy because I’m like, you don’t know me. You didn’t ask me how I prepared for this test at all.
Yeah, right.
I remember we might’ve been in the room together. It was a group of students who went in there, a lot of us. So anyone who didn’t pass had to go and sit with the dean. And he gave us this whole spiel and statistics, and I think it was even said, people who fail this don’t make it. It was laughable to me because how dare you it was. It’s like, well, I’ve never failed, first of all. And that was a huge humble myself. You’re in a whole different ballgame. Accountability. Accountability. And that was good. It was a great learning experience for us. And we became study buddies. That’s what I loved, is that we learned to lean on each other. Everyone in that class, for the most part, and whoever didn’t belong in this cohort of people who had to graduate, they either eliminated themselves or just dropped off because they couldn’t make it.
And it was surprising the people, the arrogance of some people who thought they were better than us, they were the ones who didn’t make it. But we leaned on each other to help support to where, because it wasn’t a matter of not being intelligent, not at all. It was tons of information coming at us in many different directions.
A new way of learning.
A new way of learning, a completely new way of learning. I really learned a lot about myself of, oh, in order for me to learn, I have to do it this way. This is, and I learned what I learned about myself in medical school, that being a procrastinator is a gift of mine. I never saw myself as a procrastinator because I was always preparing ahead of time for everything. But I realized in medical school, if I did things ahead of time, I was wasting my time. But if I waited to the last minute, then I was a lot more efficient with my time. It was under that stress. So I have this in my notes to bring up because there’s a gene called the comp gene. It stands for something really long, but it’s COMT gene. This gene codes for three different ways that people can respond to life.
One of them is the warrior. So the warrior warrior type with this type of person has a high resiliency to pain and stress. And I say we, because I tested myself and I have that gene, is that I can tolerate high levels of stress. And so sometimes people are like, how do you do it? I’m like, is just genetically the way I’m wired, I can tolerate high pain levels, high-stress levels. The downside to that, the reason that happens though is because that gene is coding for an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters. So I make a lot of that enzyme that breaks down the neurotransmitters. So I don’t feel pain and I don’t feel stress. But the downside to that is I will also feel depressed because I don’t feel so someone like this exercise is our medicine because when you’re moving the neurotransmitters, hormones, everything is shifting and now you feel, so it’s almost like I want to feel that intense pain of working out, burning that muscle. I can feel now and it makes me feel good and never made that correlation until then. And then the opposite is the person that worries a lot, they have great memories, they can memorize everything, and learn really quickly, but under stress.
They lose it. And these are the people who have test anxiety. It’s a real thing. That’s what the dean said. Someone in that group, a colleague of ours, actually a really good friend of ours said, I have test anxiety. And he said, that’s not a real thing.
That’s amazing.
He said that’s not a real thing. This is someone with a biology, a biochemistry degree. He said that’s not a real thing. And I was like, maybe it is. Maybe it’s not. Now I know it is a real thing. I bet you that person has that gene where she can memorize things very well, but under that high level of stress, the brain shuts down. She can’t remember what she knows. So these genes obviously tell us more than that. It tell tells medical conditions that they’re more likely to be prone to and so forth. But I just wanted to share that with our audience because there are some people who are more resilient.
But it’s interesting that you bring that up because of the unconscious bias or the implicit, right? In healthcare, a lot of times minorities aren’t given pain medication because we don’t feel. They don’t see the pain in you. Exactly. You can tolerate it.
You acting like you have, so you must be fine. Exactly. Black women get that a lot. Oh yeah, I hear that a lot. Oh yeah. Especially in the birthing process.
And I think that was my experience too, especially for me when I was going through labor for those five nights with my son. And generally, right, labor starts at night. A lot of times it begins at night. And so with him, it’s like I’m having these labor pains all night long. I missed a whole week of school. I remember going through labor every night. I was exhausted during the day, but labor, stopped during the day, but I never progressed because of his position, because he was sunnyside up not in the right position. And then the cord was wrapped around. And so when I would call and I’m like, Hey, I’m in labor. They’re like, no.
Had they taken a look ahead of time, they would’ve said, wait a minute, this baby’s position is wrong. So that’s like you said, some people are not flat out. You can tell when someone’s racist,
Right? Oh, totally flat out.
You can tell we’re not talking about that. Those people need Jesus. We can’t help that. There’s a heart issue there, a spiritual issue there when someone just hates someone who looks different than you, that’s a whole different story. And since we’re on that, because this podcast is set around spirituality, there are so many scriptures on this. I mean, we can simply look at John 1334, A new commandment I give to you, love one another as I love you so much, so you must love one another. Well, if Jesus is telling us to love each other, he’s not saying love your white person or only love black people or know what I’m saying? I would ideally love one day that we can just neutralize all that, but we’re not there yet. Things are better, but we’re not there yet because we have these two extreme views all the time, and we need to get rid of those extreme views. There’s another scripture on Galatians 3 28. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female and female for you are all one in Jesus Christ. What is he saying? He’s saying, I don’t care if you’re this or that. If you are my follower, I love you.
And so like I said, there are so many other scriptures I’m not going to get into, but there are so many others that teach us to be loving to each other. And racism does not fit Christianity at all or any world religion really. But racism itself, it makes absolutely no sense.
I don’t know if I would say it’s a psychological issue. I really think it’s a heart issue when I’m saying heart, not your physical heart. It is learned behavior because no child is ever born racist. They’re not.
No.
But at the same time, the color of your skin, it is just more melanin or less melanin.
Yeah, that’s all it is.
So the fact that the physiology inside is the same,
Yeah, a characteristic can make me not like you. That’s interesting. Maybe your personality is like that, but the way you look.
Just like I truly believe that God made us all different just to test our character. Are we going to look past the physical or are we going to be stuck on, you’re going to be stuck on my nose or the color of my skin, or how I present how I’m dressed? Are you truly going to know, be a good person, that’s your character, or are you going to look past that and see the person for who they are?
Or even further, how evil can people be? Because essentially what we’re doing when it comes to these characteristics is we’re dividing and we’re dividing and we’re creating these hierarchies based on things that you should not create a hierarchy on. And so your appearance that’s low it’s superficial.
Our physical appearance, it’s just like this water. There’s water in here, but you can’t tell there’s water in there. You just see the outside. Oh, it’s a purple shiny bottle, but you don’t know what’s inside. There’s coffee, there’s water, what’s in there? So what’s in us as an individual? Is there good in us or is there bad? And that’s what we should be looking for, look past the container and what’s inside of that person. Totally. That requires because we’re going to talk about how do people break through that. That’s the real thing about this conversation. Like I said, we’re not going to solve the problem of racism, not on this episode, but that unconscious bias, there are ways to do it. In medical school, we had an ethics class and all these classes that we would, and then, oh my god, one of these ethics classes. So prior to the class, all the students had to do these implicit bias tests or that’s what they were called. We did these implicit tests online, and it was over so many different categories, and we sat in this class discussing our results. I think my jaw dropped, hit the floor. I was so emotional, emotionally disturbed by what I heard from My future colleagues to see that wow, people really lack self-awareness. They lack awareness. They lack intelligence, wisdom, just decent common sense, and respect for others. It just blew my, I am sure you remember that class.
For sure. It was very eye-opening. I can’t believe people really still think this way.
It’s true. But then also the, it’s one thing to take these tests and you see, yes, these bias, they exist and they’re within me, right?
We have them. Totally. And I’ll share some in a minute, but go ahead.
But you analyze it and you say, okay, yeah, I have this right, and you work on changing it, but the degree to which people were like, yeah, and so it’s like you don’t
See that this is a problem. You don’t think there was a disconnect, wasn’t there? Huge disconnect? They did not see, they didn’t change. They didn’t think they had a problem. That was the question, do you think you have unconscious bias? Even though we just discussed it, and that person said something that sounded kind of racist, but it was really just a bias they had. They said, no, I don’t think I have that problem. The question is not, are you racist? The question is, do you have an unconscious bias? And we all do. We all do. Whether it’s towards, I am a woman, I could have an unconscious bias about women, and I have them.
For sure.
Like I said, I’m of Mexican descent. I have an unconscious bias toward my own as ethnic group. And the way that we have to become aware of it is to acknowledge it, humble or little butts sit down and really see that, oh, I passed judgment on this. So I’ll give an example. So I had a couple of years ago, I had a Mexican male. A man spoke only Spanish, and someone had referred him to me and he needed help with the way he was feeling. He described everything. So I knew there most likely was diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol, what’s really plaguing the community. But I explained to him how I worked and if he was willing to do those things, then okay, so he agreed to it. And I mean, immediately on the phone I could hear his voice, his accent. He sounds like he’s probably not very educated, so he’s going to take a little bit of effort on me. Boom, right there. I already made an unconscious bias to buy him based on just his voice. I haven’t even seen the man, but I just heard him. So I’m checking myself, Ana, give him the opportunity. So he came into the office, and he agreed to all my terms. He comes into the office with his wife. I’m going over diet, lifestyle, all of this. When he comes back to review labs on a second visit, it was a hot mess. This man is steps away from being on dialysis. And my goal is how many people can I keep from doing dialysis. So I had this hard conversation with him, and before I sat with him, I said, I’m going to treat him just like I would treat any other patient. It doesn’t matter what their education, their income level, what they do for a living, their raise, their language, none of that. I’m going to give him the same opportunity that I would give just anyone else.
And I went right in because he had a little machismo attitude of you’re a woman. And I could tell he was very respectful to me, but I could sense that. And I presented everything to him and gave him the hard facts and said, Hey, you’re hiring me for a reason, and here’s how I’m going to help you. If you don’t do these things, you will be on dialysis and you don’t want that. It’s a very expensive treatment that you have to do for the rest of your life three times a week. I mean, we’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars per one treatment. And I knew he didn’t have insurance. I knew that wasn’t going to be within his means to do. And after the conversation, he said, well, he said, rah, he says, you’re going to be the first woman that I’m going to listen to. His wife was right there. I’m like, wait, you’re not listening to your wife? I said, well, you need to start listening to your wife.
Because if she’s telling you to not eat this way, she’s the one who’s going to be most impacted when your health really declines. And so had I made that judgment at the beginning on that phone call, I would’ve been like, he’s not going to listen to me.
He sounds very machista. He’s just going to have it his way. He’s not going to give up his tortillas. He’s not going to change his diet. I don’t want to be frustrated with that. And unfortunately, people do make those judgments.
Whether how they sound, or how they look, they make those judgments. So of course, we’ve been doing a lot of work on ourselves on being aware of this, but we all have these unbiased, unforeseen, unconscious biases that happened a lot in medicine.
And like I said before, it happens to all races. I just had a male white male patient tell me how, and this is a professional, he ended up in the emergency room, he wasn’t feeling well, and he said, I felt like they thought I was a druggie or an alcoholic because of the way they were treating him. So it happens to all people based on how you present. So I want to go over what are some things that you can do to change this about you. Because I know a lot of people are going to hear this conversation and say, that’s not me. Or some are like, how do I know that I have these or what? Now it’s not a question. If you have them, we have them. The question is how do I change it? How do I identify? So I’m going to provide a link on this episode where you are going to have some resources of area of places you can go to do tests online. They’re implicit tests that you can take online, and you can just type that in implicit tests so that you can see what, and there are so many different categories that you can assess yourself and see what are unconscious biases you have. That’s one way is to do these tests and answer them honestly.
And then you’ll be surprised at the outcome. You might be thinking you’re answering the right answer, and then you’re like, oh, I didn’t see that. So one of the steps, I have several steps here that I wrote down on how do you change this about yourself. One of them is to acknowledge your bias. So you start identifying what are these areas that you might have biases on? And just face them straight on, learn more about you and how do you learn more about you? Is asking other people their opinions, their feedback on how they examine you on certain topics that have to do with stereotypes and prejudices. And if the more honest they can be, the better extend your comfort zone. And by that I mean that personal biases can be combated by getting to know people on an individual level. So biases can derive from stereotypes and generalizations.
So getting to know individuals can lead to proving them wrong. So meet and interact with people who are different than you, and then you’ll see where your biases are and take responsibility for mitigating bias. We all sin, we are not perfect. We’re here to learn. But if you can just come down and take responsibility for that thought process that you have, that’s how you’re going to change it. Admit your mistakes. When you do make an unconscious bias of someone, if it’s something that you can do in the moment and that it’s appropriate, just apologize for the mistake that you made for the assumption you make. I often get asked in the store sometimes I don’t know why. Like I said, I don’t know why sometimes someone will tell me, oh, I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish. I’m like, I’m not talking to you in Spanish. I wasn’t even talking. What made you think? So that person should say, I’m sorry I was wrong. I made a judgment.
That’s amazing.
Right? So that would be a good example for someone to just stop and kind of do that. Are there any ending remarks, Dr. White, that you want to share with the audience about this topic?
I think self-awareness is key. I think self-awareness is big, being truthful for me, I love the truth probably too much seriously. But I think once you can be honest with yourself, I mean, what better way to live anyway is through honesty. No one wants to walk around in a lie. I mean, if you do, then that’s something to work on in itself. But I think honesty is the key. And so recognizing where you are, recognizing who you currently are, but also who you want to become. I think that’s really big. And so I think it just all starts with being honest.
I like that. I like being self-aware and being honest with yourself. And hey, if you work in the medical health industry, please do these tests and find out where your un biases are. Because like I said, when I saw my father in the hospital on and off for the last month, the same Hispanic Spanish speaking nurses that were helping my dad were making unconscious biases because they were not aware that they were doing that. It’s not that they were racist, it’s just that they were making judgments on the way he presented that he was fine, but when he was actually asked and listened, he wasn’t doing well. So it can really help you with your patients and with patient care. I’m going to provide Dr. White’s contact information as well in this podcast. So if you have any questions, want to reach out, want to work with her, she’s here in the valley in Phoenix.
And so I want to thank you for joining us on this episode. We are going to do another part to interview next week, so you want to stay in tune with that, but we are going to do the good, the bad, and the ugly in the current sick care medical system, the ugly that I want to talk about today is not giving informed consent. Not enough doctors are giving informed consent. And we saw this happen a lot during Covid when vaccines came around and people were not being provided the full consent. You still have the right to decide whether you want to do therapy or not, even if it’s in your best interest or not. I obviously, we want you to stay alive and be healthy, but it really does come down to it being your choice. And if your doctor is not providing you the options of the good, what’s the benefits, the risk of that therapy, or what other alternatives have, they’re not giving you proper informed consent. Until next time, guys, thank you for watching this episode. I hope you learned something of great value and we look forward for the next episode. So as always, stay blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.