The Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Office of Graduate Medical Education and the 2021-22 Resident Council recently hosted their annual Professional Development Symposium, titled “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Becoming a Catalyst for Change.”
The April 12 symposium attracted more than 80 attendees, many of them current residents, program directors and core faculty, along with incoming interns, faculty and medical students.
Speakers included Herman Gray, M.D., M.B.A., chair and Distinguished Service professor of Pediatrics, and Donovan Roy, Ed.D., vice dean of Diversity and Inclusion. Resident Council President Danny Taheri, M.D., and Vice President Kat Siemiesz, M.D., moderated the event.
Graduate Medical Education offered the symposium as an implicit bias training event. The speakers addressed ways physicians can recognize and mitigate the impact of interpersonal and structural racism in clinical encounters. Brief case studies helped participants better understand microaggressions, defined by multicultural counseling expert Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D, as “everyday verbal, nonverbal and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized social group.”
The Professional Development Symposium is one venue by which Graduate Medical Education works to assists residents and faculty in meeting the critical challenge of achieving diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical care. The office maintains a Canvas site with a range of health disparities resources to assist in incorporating health disparity awareness as a standard component of resident education; conducts a brief introduction to health disparities in the New Resident Orientation every summer; requires all incoming residents to complete American Medical Association and Institute for Healthcare Improvement modules on managing unconscious bias, the basics of health equity, improving health equity, and racism in medicine as part of the onboarding process; and administers cases involving cultural competency and health disparities during its summer Objective Structured Clinical Examination simulated-patient training activity mandated for all first-year residents.
In addition, in Graduate Medical Education and its primary clinical partner, Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital, in 2021 began participating in National Initiative VIII - Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion. Sponsored by the Alliance of Independent Academic Medical Centers, the 18-month program fosters quality improvement projects to facilitate and improve equity, diversity and inclusion in clinical learning environments to impact individual performance and institutional culture.
The office seeks to recruit a more diverse resident population for 2023-24 and promote inclusiveness in programs through mediated discussion sessions, standing Wellness Committees and the Annual Program Evaluation process.
For more information on the 2022 Professional Development Symposium visit https://gme.med.wayne.edu/profdevelsymp
For more information on WSUSOM sole-sponsored residency programs, visit https://gme.med.wayne.edu/