Bias is defined as prejudice either against or in favor of something, someone or a group of people and it is usually considered unfair. It could also mean the one-sided tendency to neglect neutral viewpoints when dealing with a group of people or things. The two main types of bias are implicit and explicit biases and they both affect interactions and outcomes in healthcare. Explicit bias is deliberate while implicit bias is exercised unconsciously.
Healthcare professionals may display biased opinions against their patients, in different settings and for different reasons. This will usually tend to affect the quality of the interactions between healthcare professionals and their patients, often with negative effects within healthcare setting. In any healthcare setting, the interactions between different patient characteristics and professional’s characteristics reveal the complexity of this issue and it highly affects the relationship between patients and clinicians. This therefore calls for the need of healthcare practitioners’ to address the issue of biases so that every patient feels safe.
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Biases can impact outcomes in selected nursing practice settings in that healthcare practitioners who hold stereotypes based on the race, age, gender among other characteristics of the patients may misunderstand or misinterpret their clinical decisions. This in therefore leads to poor quality of healthcare services and the end results is poor services to patients.
Biases are not only associated with healthcare. People are often bias to others based on age, different gender, different color or even religion. A specific example of personal biases and attitudes towards others is when one discrimi8nates another because they have different religious views. For example, people who share different religious sentiments from healthcare practitioners may be denied certain medicines.
One bias that I may have is prejudice towards same sex couples. One strategy I would use to overcome this bias is by making sure that I am friendlier and act less threatened by these people I perceive different. This is because behavior influences character and being friendly for a long time will make me like them.
