Events

The electronic health record is a vehicle not only for documenting medical care that has been delivered but also for guiding future care. Clinicians read their own and other clinicians’ notes when seeing patients, making diagnoses, and considering tests and treatments. The language clinicians use when writing notes about patients can thus influence how they and other clinicians view and treat that patient. This seminar will describe language that may undermine respect for and stigmatize patients, explore its downstream potential to transmit bias and perpetuate healthcare inequities, and make concrete suggestions to guide the moral choices that clinicians make when communicating about patients.

Mary Catherine Beach, MD,  is a professor of medicine, with a joint appointment in the Center for Health Equity and the Berman Institute of Bioethics, at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Beach’s research focuses on humanizing healthcare by promoting respect for patients as well as improved patient-clinician communication. Much of her work has been targeted towards improving healthcare quality for patients who face systemic disadvantage and in the setting of HIV/AIDS and sickle cell disease (SCD). Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Greenwall Foundation.