Diversity in EMS is a new bimonthly column featured in EMSWorld. This month’s feature article is “Recognizing Implicit Bias in the Prehospital Environment” by Brad Keating, MPH, NRP, and Lorie Fridell, PhD.
It’s only been in the last decade or so that professionals in various spheres have awakened to a more accurate understanding of how bias and prejudice manifest in people and can produce differential treatment of groups.
For many years we thought all prejudice and bias took the form of what we now label explicit bias. This form of bias is consciously held. The person with explicit bias links various groups to negative stereotypes based on animus and hostility toward those groups. These attitudes and stereotypes can produce discriminatory behavior, and the person with explicit bias is unconcerned about this outcome.1,2 Racism is an example of an explicit bias.
Fair & Impartial Policing offers customized implicit-bias training for EMS agencies. FIP’s curriculum is based on the scientific concepts of modern implicit bias research and how they apply to the daily work of EMS professionals.
Read the full “Diversity in EMS: Recognizing Implicit Bias in the Prehospital Environment” article here
