Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in C-L Training During COVID-19 and Beyond

The past year has been a period of reckoning with the structural inequalities which shape the everyday lives of people of color living in the United States. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social inequities which drive profound health disparities, including the disparate burdening of different racial groups by COVID-19. These disparities have forced medical systems to examine structural inequality to more effectively fight the pandemic and improve healthcare equity.

Similarly, this period has been a time for medical training programs to reflect, innovate, and consider new perspectives in order to ensure equity within our own educational systems. This has created opportunities to equip and empower our trainees to address health disparities during the pandemic and beyond as they enter their future roles as healthcare leaders.

For C-L psychiatrists, whose purview includes the emotional, interpersonal, and societal effects of medical illness, the COVID-19 pandemic creates special opportunities and obligations. During this workshop, members of the Fellowship Education Subcommittee will identify challenges to ensuring equity in C-L fellowship education posed by COVID-19, examine opportunities to incorporate new perspectives on social equity into training, and discuss strategies for providing future C-L psychiatrists with the knowledge and skills to integrate structural competence into their future work .

Dr. Sejal Shah will describe the pandemic’s challenges to fellowship recruitment, as well as how the experiences of the past year, particularly virtual interviewing and other technological advances, have created openings for improving equity in access to C-L training for communities that face structural barriers. She will review data from this year’s recruitment and Match, and discuss the Subcommittee’s recommendations for recruitment in the virtual setting.

Dr. Adrienne Taylor will discuss pedagogical methods, including didactics, supervision, and rounds, for teaching C-L trainees about how systemic racism and other forms of discrimination shape clinical outcomes. She will discuss how quality improvement work examining disparities, such as the evaluation of racial disparities in behavioral restraint use, may be incorporated into work with trainees.

Dr. Rushi Vyas will discuss how the increased awareness of violence against Black Americans and the escalation of discrimination against Asian Americans have created heightened personal stresses and threats to well-being for our C-L fellows and other trainees. He will discuss strategies for supporting trainees and enhancing wellness, particularly those from under-represented racial and other historically disenfranchised groups.

Dr. Durga Roy will review strategies for developing new education and scholarship opportunities for trainees within C-L psychiatry programs, including how fellows may create scholarship innovations that focus on structural racism and other forms of inequality. Theory and methods that program directors and other faculty may employ in will be discussed.

Dr. Mark Bradley will moderate the program and audience discussion.