IMPLICIT BIAS: A REVIEW OF HISTORY AND IMPACT IN MEDICINE

Abstract

Medicine is an industry built on ensuring healthier, more enriched lives for patients and their loved ones. Something this important is something that should be equitable for all patients, yet many find themselves the target of implicit or explicit bias. Sometimes this is intentional discrimination, others systemic, and many more unintentional implicit effects. The understanding of implicit bias is something that has formulated over the last century; from ideas about attitude to the full knowledge of the ubiquitous impact of implicit bias. Since implicit bias has been better understood, the Implicit Association Test has been created to evaluate this. Findings targeting medicine have found that in a majority of studies (83.8%) (Maina et. al, 2018), most health care providers have some level of pro-White, anti-Black implicit bias. Further studies have shown how that bias manifests in medical care and how certain groups are discriminated against within medicine. Finally, this area is still in need of much further research with specific patient groups, provider groups, and ways to counteract bias.