Perceptions of racism in a children's psychiatric inpatient unit: A qualitative study of entrenching and uprooting factors.

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT?: The impacts of racism on health are well documented and are greater for mental than for general health. Mental health professionals are well positioned to help dismantle racism and structural barriers compromising optimal patient care. WHAT THE PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE: We describe a systematic and orderly way to identify factors that contribute to entrenching racism as the status quo or that help to uproot it. By incorporating a racial equity lens, we can better understand daily racism and inform the optimal antiracist actions most relevant to an inpatient psychiatric setting. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE?: Our two-domain/six-theme model may serve as a rubric for individuals to engage in structured self-reflection, for organizations in auditing or programmatic evaluation, or as scaffolding for difficult but frequently elided conversations. The unique strengths of a mental health environment can be harnessed toward the elimination of racism and racist practices in clinical care and in the workplace ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: It is well documented that racism plays a role in health care access and outcomes. However, discussions about racism in the inpatient psychiatric workplace are generally avoided. To address this gap, we incorporated a racial equity perspective into a qualitative study to better understand daily racism, its impact on patients and staff, and to inform optimal antiracist actions most relevant to inpatient psychiatric settings. AIM/QUESTION: We sought to identify factors that may contribute to or deter from racism to inform interventions to sustain a psychologically supportive environment for patients and staff. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews using a purposive sample of 22 individuals in an acute child psychiatric inpatient service. We analysed transcripts using thematic analysis guided by a constructivist grounded theory conceptual framework. RESULTS: We identified two countervailing processes: (1) Entrenching-factors that sustain or increase racism: Predisposing, Precipitating, and Perpetuating and (2) Uprooting-factors that rectify or reduce racism: Preventing, Punctuating, and Prohibiting. We organized each of the elements into a '6P' model along a temporal sequence around sentinel racist events. For each of the six components we describe: Contributing Factors, Emotional Reactions, and Behavioural Responses as reported by participants. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Identifying factors that entrench or uproot racism can inform specific steps to improve the care of all children and families on an inpatient child psychiatry unit. The two-domain/six-theme model we developed can serve as a rubric for individuals or milieu-based inpatient settings serving patients of any age to engage in structured self-reflection, auditing, program evaluation, or as scaffolding for difficult but frequently elided conversations.

Educational intervention against biological racism.

INTRODUCTION: Biological race, the fallacy that racial health disparities reflect differences in human biology, exerts undue influence on medicine. Interventions that teach against this myth are largely absent from required medical curricula. Here, we describe and present student and facilitator evaluations of an educational intervention, organised around Dorothy Roberts' book Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century that included a discussion of preselected chapters from Fatal Invention, case studies illustrating strategies to prevent the misuse of race in medicine and a question-and-answer session with Dorothy Roberts. METHODS: Online feedback surveys were distributed to students and facilitators to capture their general perceptions of the session, how well it satisfied its objectives and the pre-session training materials provided to facilitators. Quantitative measures were analysed using descriptive statistics, and qualitative responses were evaluated using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Student and facilitator surveys garnered response rates of 59.8% (61/102) and 75% (30/40), respectively, and most expressed satisfaction with the session. Students felt more prepared to address the misuse of race in clinical contexts than in pre-clinical contexts (90.16% vs. 77.05%) and among peers than among superiors (95.08% vs. 72.13%) (p < 0.05). Some students (31.15%) felt that their small group facilitators were unprepared to address microaggressions. DISCUSSION: Our survey responses suggest that this intervention was effective in teaching against biological racism and equipped students with tools to address the misuse of race, particularly in clinical contexts. Future iterations should highlight strategies to confront biological racism in pre-clinical contexts and among superiors.