Race-Conscious Serious Illness Communication: An Interpersonal Tool To Dismantle Racism In Practice And Research
Racism significantly contributes to inequitable care quality and outcomes for people of color with serious illness, their families, and their communities. In a study in the Cambridge University Press, authors used serious illness communication (SIC) to foster trust, elicit patients’ needs and values, and deliver goal-concordant services. They found that race-conscious SIC practices may assist to acknowledge racial dynamics within the patient–clinician encounter. Furthermore, race-conscious SIC may help to mitigate implicit and explicit bias in clinical practices and the exclusionary research cultures that guide them. However, current SIC tools do not actively guide users to incorporate patients’ experiences with racism into care.