Commentary: Fostering Bias Mitigation and Compassionate Behavior in Dental and Other Healthcare Professional Students and Practitioners

Unconscious bias remains a poorly managed global problem [1-5]. For example, implicit bias alters perceptions concerning tooth restorability [4]. Dentists and other healthcare professionals harbor attitudes against various categories of people and treat them unfairly. This discrimination leads to inferior care outcomes owing to poorer relationships with patients and effects on their behaviors such as adherence to treatment plans. We could, however, train all healthcare professionals to mitigate their implicit biases and display more compassionate behavior using methods we have used in a Medical Humanities course [6,7]. Virtually every prospective medical student in this course mitigated their biases and became more compassionate through regular critical reflections on team service-learning and discussions in class about their unconscious biases. This pedagogy/andragogy should improve the health, not only of those against whom we discriminate, but also of the general population. The culture of healthcare professional education needs to change, however, in order to accomplish these ends. Reflection on behavior, such as service to the community, should continue throughout providers’ careers in order to help them to continuously monitor and mitigate their implicit biases and become more compassionate people.