MEETS HEALTH EQUITY REQUIREMENTS! Implicit Bias and Healthcare Equity: The Impact of Self-Awareness
Presented by
Dreya Blume, LCSWThis workshop aims to assist clinicians in increasing their awareness of internally held biases towards particular groups of people.
Overview
Continuing Education Credit Hours: 2 Health Equity CEs Recorded Summer, 2024
Age, race, ethnicity, weight, gender, social class, religion, sexual identity, gender identity, profession…this list, of course, is incomplete. The point is that there are multitudes of differences between people. Unfortunately, an interaction with another person can trigger unconsciously held negative or stigmatizing attitudes. Even more worrying, the research shows that unconscious (i.e., implicit) biases of mental health professionals influence how they assess and treat their clients.
To address this problem, this workshop aims to assist clinicians in increasing their awareness of internally held biases towards particular groups of people. But awareness isn’t enough. We will also explore managing biases, changing behavior, and tracking progress. This work will help you reassess your paperwork, evaluate how you run your clinical practice, and explore how you might best serve clients, regardless of their background.
We might have little control over our biases, but what we do have is the power to ensure that those attitudes do not prevent us from treating clients equitably and with dignity. Objectives
Participants in this workshop will be able to:
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Describe the features of implicit biases. -
Locate and recognize internal biases. -
Consider how to utilize this awareness to create a standard of best practices for their clinical work. -
Create strategies for managing their implicit biases. -
Develop strategies that can lead to behavior change in terms of addressing and shifting their biases.
About the Presenter
Dreya Blume (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, author, and educator. Dreya began working in the mental health field in 2004 in southwest Virginia, where she spent almost two decades serving the local transgender community as a gender therapist. She recently moved to Durham, NC, where she focuses on offering continuing education training to therapists and coaching for private practice clinicians who want to expand their business uniquely. Dreya loves to write and is the author of several books, including, “The Tarot Activity Book: A Collection of Creative and Therapeutic Ideas for the Cards,” “Journaling the Tarot,” “Everyone Has a Story: Using the Hero’s Journey and Narrative Therapy to Reframe the Struggle of Mental Illness,” and “Tarot for Transformation: Using the Major Arcana to Discover Your Best Self and Create a Life Worth Living.” All of Dreya’s books (under her former name, Andy Matzner) are available here: https://dreyablume.com/books. Dreya is also passionate about teaching. Before becoming a mental health clinician, she spent many years teaching English as a Second Language in places such as Japan, Australia, Thailand, and Hawaii. Once in Virginia, Dreya worked as an adjunct professor for almost twenty years at Hollins University, teaching gender studies and sociology in their Master of Liberal Studies program. In addition, she spent twelve years teaching future social workers in the human services program at Virginia Western Community College. Learn more about Dreya on her website: https://dreyablume.com/.