Addressing Implicit Bias in Healthcare through Virtual Reality: A Human Factors Engineering Approach
Interventions meant to reduce or mitigate implicit biases have thus far focused solely on education and training. However, the efficacy and sustainability of merely reflecting and becoming more aware of one’s biases is questionable given the social impetus to address and reduce biases and discrimination, especially in healthcare. We propose the application of Human Factors Engineering principles and frameworks as well as the exploration of Virtual Reality in seeking to understand and mitigate unconscious biases in healthcare. Through Human Factors Engineering, we can understand how biases function as automatic shortcuts in the processing of information. Before cognitively examining and processing the environment, we unconsciously jump to decisions or responses after perceiving certain stimuli, like skin color or race. Such biases impact patient safety as well as the psychological safety of healthcare workers. Perceived discrimination or bias between technologists and nurses provide a sample interaction and cohort for the proposed study and initiative. First, surveys will be administered to confirm and measure the perception of bias and discrimination amongst nurses and technologists. Second, virtual reality will be used to simulate a patient care setting in which information about the patient is communicated through a social interaction. Bias, and its impact, will then be quantified and measured in terms of memory, or the extent to which participants retain or regard the information about the patient. The findings will then be leveraged to explore virtual simulations that seek to directly reduce unconscious biases. In doing so, we seek to explore and utilize Virtual Reality as an innovative tool in healthcare research, training, and intervention.
Comments
Very pertinent and important…
Very pertinent and important topic, Joanna! I think you brought up a good point that mandatory (and possibly one-off) bias training employed by healthcare institutions may not be the most effective. Through your research/reading of the literature, is there a potential concern that VR bias testing won't accurately reflect real-life interactions due to its virtual, and thus not real, nature?
Very Interesting Topic
I have recently had many discussion on the this topic of implicit biases in healthcare, and I am very excited to see results from the simulations you propose! Do you think these simulations could be used to not only recognize but also educate those with biases?
@shunmel@upenn.edu
Thank you! I think the concern that VR will not accurately reflect real-life interactions will always be there, especially because virtual avatars can only seem realistic to a certain extent. I think the value in using VR is not only in trying to replicate or imitate real-world environments to the best of our ability, but to manipulate these environments and simulations to study or even produce possible effects. A 'game-like' application of VR was used at MIT that had participants react to a racial experience in a classroom which might be interesting!
https://news.mit.edu/2019/virtual-reality-game-simulates-race-experienc…
@khani@upenn.edu
Yes! The hope is to not only understand and recognize but leverage the simulations to reduce biases! We're hoping that virtual reality could be explored as an intervention tool that tries to directly reduce biases, although it definitely could be useful in further educating people about their biases. Interesting studies have been done where participants merely embodied an avatar of another race for a certain amount of time, and showed measured reductions in their implicit biases.
Great presentation!
I enjoyed your presentation on how virtual reality can be utilized as a tool to recognize and reduce bias in health care settings. I think this is extremely important in thinking about providing equal and effective care to patients of different communities, each with their own different experiences. I also think that you make a good point about the bias that may be present between different healthcare workers in hospitals and utilizing virtual reality to reduce these biases to create a better work environment.