Envisioning the future of primary care: intervention strategies to support patient-centered communication feedback technology.

Abstract

Objective: Clinician implicit bias can impede patient-centered communication, leading to health care inequities. While the field of implicit bias education is evolving with advances in technology, clinicians' perspectives remain underexplored. This study investigated clinicians' perceptions of educational strategies to complement communication feedback technology in the implementation of an implicit bias education intervention.

Materials and methods: We recruited primary care practitioners in remote interviews to brainstorm future technologies for improving clinician awareness of implicit bias in patient-provider communication. Participants completed an online survey in which they rated the priority of educational strategies that could complement the technology. We performed inductive-deductive thematic analysis of the interview data with Implicit Bias Recognition and Management (IBRM) domains as a priori codes and used descriptive statistics to summarize the survey data.

Results: Participants (n = 16) proposed how future technology could improve clinician awareness, such as recording visits to help clinicians be more self-aware of their communication; however, some providers expressed concerns regarding feedback fatigue and the potential impact of technology on reducing time spent with patients. Participants recommended incorporating feedback regularly into training, identifying organizational incentives, and debriefing with trusted colleagues and communication experts.

Discussion: Participants brainstormed technologies and identified educational strategies, such as discussion with a facilitator, that could promote clinician receptivity to feedback and inform IBRM approaches for clinical ambient intelligence. Yet, challenges remain to incentivizing participation for practicing clinicians, and Continuing Medical Education may be one effective approach.

Conclusion: The proposed technologies and prioritized educational strategies have the potential to promote health equity by helping clinicians develop skills to manage implicit bias. In the future, these findings could inform IBRM interventions that leverage clinical ambient intelligence.