“Increased global attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion necessitates inclusive teaching in health professions education.” The opening line of this article by Jeremy Amayo and team set the scene for a wide-ranging discussion of principle and practical strategies to help teachers be more inclusive – in the classroom, in the clinical environment, and in the online learning environment.
Jeremy Amayo is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Ultrasound Education at the Emory University School of Medicine. He is also a Physician Assistant in the Division of Critical Care Medicine at Emory Healthcare.
We start with a fundamental question to ask ourselves when considering inclusive teaching - “Who is being left out?” We discuss how we might recognize our biases in teaching and learning, embrace a growth mindset and embrace failure. We consider how our health professions learners are increasingly diverse – not only with regard to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, but also underrecognized traits like introversion/ extroversion, organizational habits, preferred learning styles, and reading speed. The 12 tips traverse fundamental principles to simple practical tips – like adding closed captions to media in Powerpoint. Jeremy shared some of his current PhD work on failure in health professions education, and how to develop our skills in learning from failure.
Importantly we consider why inclusive teaching is important – beyond the obvious equity for traditionally disadvantaged groups – and realize this approach makes our teaching higher quality for all, and more likely to result in return on investment for educational institutions. Jeremy gave a shout out to a great talk by one of his Emory colleagues – “From Bystander to Upstander: From Advocacy to Action" by Kimberly Manning – that is of particular relevance for considering inclusivity in the clinical environment.
We finished with a reflection on the writing and publishing process, including the concept of post publication peer review at MedEdPublish.
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Did you know that the Harvard Macy Institute Community Blog has had more than 300 posts? Previous blog posts have explored topics including, developing leaders for healthcare and education, and leading curricular change, just in time simulation for high stakes communication.
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Victoria Brazil, MD (Educators, ’05, Leaders ’07, Assessment ‘10) is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Simulation at Bond University Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine. Her research interests include podcasting and simulation, and she is co-producer of Simulcast - a podcast about healthcare simulation. Victoria can be followed on Twitter.
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