How to Avoid Committing Microaggressions

Abstract

Abstract This chapter serves as a practical guide for current and future healthcare professionals. It considers structural, social, environmental, and institutional factors that contribute to the prevalence of microaggressions in medical contexts and offers tips and strategies to avoid committing them. Specifically, it provides guidance for how healthcare practitioners and institutions can change their practices and policies to ensure that their workplaces are as inclusive, equitable, welcoming, and patient-centered as possible for patients of all identities and experiences. The chapter ends with an invitation to readers to develop strategies of their own for reducing microaggressions in their practices, provides sample rubrics to measure the success of those strategies, and suggests further avenues for continuing to learn about the lived experiences of patients with intersectional marginalized identities.