Diversity training for health professionals: Preparedness to competently address intellectual disability in the Western Cape Province, South Africa

Diversity training for health professionals in South Africa has traditionally been conceptualized as differences in gender, race or ethnicity, culture and sexual orientation. More recently physical disability and mental illness was included as a dimension. Intellectual disabilities received lip service as a diversity concern. This paper reports on health professionals' perceptions of the extent to which diversity training prepared them to competently deal with intellectual disabilities. This explorative study included a purposive sample of 18 health care professionals experienced in intellectual disability services. Two focus groups were facilitated over three sessions. Transcripts were analysed thematically. Health professionals felt inadequately prepared to consider intellectual disabilities as a diversity issue. They could not effectively advocate for reasonable accommodation. There was a differential familiarity with issues related to diversity and intellectual disability with profession constituting an additional intersecting dimension of diversity. Health professions did not perceive their diversity training to prepare them to deal competently with intellectual disabilities.

A Model for the Development of Anti-Racist Culturally Humble Educational Practitioners

Although diversity training has become an institutional norm for businesses, schools, and organizations, the full extent of its impact remains unclear. This chapter reports on research aimed as more fully understanding the transformational journeys of diversity practitioners and discovering how they deepen their sense of cultural humility. Following a review of the evolution of diversity training, the chapter presents a theoretical framework featuring five interrelated transformational processes: dialogue, inquiry, self-reflection, conflict transformation, and identity negotiation. The chapter concludes with a discussion about how these processes can be applied to enhance the development of cultural humility and consequently better achieve the desired outcomes of diversity training. It argues for a multi-year model for the training of diversity practitioners and others committed to personal development and social change as well as a lifelong approach that supports the process of moving more deeply into a culturally humble way of being.

Launching Diversity-Intelligent Strategies in Organizations

The purpose of this chapter is to provide diversity intelligent strategies that can be used by leaders to eliminate ineffective diversity efforts, enhance effective diversity efforts, and provide new diversity intelligent strategies in organizations. Integrating DQ alongside emotional, cultural, and intellectual intelligences in the workplace can strengthen the effectiveness of leaders' people management efforts. Most employees enter organizations with the expectation of having positive experiences with their leaders and achieving success towards their career goals. Yet, many are marginalized or limited in their opportunities for advancement for reasons of which they have no control. The eradication of ineffective training and development of diversity must occur for effective change to occur. Credible DQ, ethical and legal issues, and workforce inter-personnel diversity training programs must be launched by HRD professionals and organization leaders so that leaders are developed to provide employees with fair and just treatment and successful career development will ensue.

Mediation: Causal Mechanisms in Business and Management

Mediation refers to causation. Tests for mediation are common in business, management, and related fields. In the simplest mediation model, a researcher asserts that a treatment causes a mediator and that the mediator causes an outcome. For example, a practitioner might examine whether diversity training increases awareness of stereotypes, which, in turn, improves inclusive climate perceptions. Because mediation inferences are causal inferences, it is important to demonstrate that the cause actually precedes the effect, the cause and effect covary, and rival explanations for the causal effect can be ruled out. Although various experimental designs for testing mediation hypotheses are available, single randomized experiments and two randomized experiments provide the strongest evidence for inferring mediation compared with nonexperimental designs, where selection bias and a multitude of confounding variables can make causal interpretations difficult. In addition to experimental designs, traditional statistical approaches for testing mediation include causal steps, difference in coefficients, and product of coefficients. Of the traditional approaches, the causal steps method tends to have low statistical power; the product of coefficients method tends to provide adequate power. Bootstrapping can improve the performance of these tests for mediation. The general causal mediation framework offers a modern approach to testing for causal mechanisms. The general causal mediation framework is flexible. The treatment, mediator, and outcome can be categorical or continuous. The general framework not only incorporates experimental designs (e.g., single randomized experiments, two randomized experiments) but also allows for a variety of statistical models and complex functional forms.

Team Belonging: Integrating Teamwork and Diversity Training Through Emotions

With the worldwide focus shifting toward important questions of what diversity means to society, organizations are attempting to keep up with employees’ needs to feel recognized and belong. Given that traditionally team and diversity trainings are provided separately, with different theoretical backgrounds and goals, they are often misaligned and ineffective. We review 339 empirical articles depicting a team, diversity, or emotional management training to extract themes and determine which methods are most effective. Although research has demonstrated the importance of belonging for providing positive workplace outcomes, we found that the traditional design of these trainings and lack of emotional management prevent a balance between team and diversity goals, preventing belonging. We propose an integrative training with emotional management to help teams foster optimal belonging, where members can unite together through their differences. Accordingly, our themes inform this training model that can inspire future research into more effective training.

626 Barriers Faced by Female Surgical Trainees – A Qualitative Study

Aim Today women make up 56% of medical students, yet just 12% of surgical consultants, a number that has remained static since 2013. This qualitative study aimed to explore the barriers to female success in modern surgery. Method Semi-structured qualitative interviews were undertaken primarily with female surgical trainees to determine the barriers they face. Male trainees and Training Programme Directors were also interviewed for triangulation. Results Nineteen interviews were performed (15 female trainees, 3 male trainees and 1 TPD) between October 2019 and March 2020. Family pressures and becoming a mother were significant barriers for women training in surgery, a barrier that did not apply to male trainees who were fathers, often resulting in women choosing to train less than full time (LTFT). Unfortunately, LTFT training presents further obstacles for female trainees. The set-up of the National training programme in surgery provides many non-gender specific barriers, chiefly moving hospital every 6 months resulting in disrupted training and long commutes. Sexism and discrimination are still common, both from colleagues and patients. Many participants perceived inherent differences between genders in communication and methods for coping with stress. Conclusions Greater gender equality in surgery may be achieved by changes in the structure and organisation of training to reduce the tension between the professional role and the predominantly female-led role of raising children. Better equality and diversity training and awareness at all levels in surgery may help to mitigate some of the conscious and unconscious bias that still exists.

725 Experience of Implementing Diversity Teaching into University of Oxford

Background Medical education should equip students with the necessary skills to support the diverse population they treat and work with and be confident to act as an ally for patients and colleagues. We found there to be a gap for a diversity module in the curriculum at Oxford University. Method We created a diversity training session for over 300 medical students aiming to; The course consisted of a series of talks conducted by a senior lecturer on diversity, doctors, patients, and students, followed by small-group case-based teaching facilitated by a final-year medical student and a junior doctor. All facilitators underwent training by a senior lecturer on diversity. The cases encouraged students to reflect on their own personal biases and enact how they would confront discrimination on the wards. Students completed a survey before and after the session, rating self-confidence on six key learning points. Results 91.4% students agreed the session was useful to their medical training. There was a significant increase in students who felt confident implementing all learning points: defining key terms (post-session: 95.4%, pre-session: 82.3%); understanding health inequalities (post-session: 93%, pre-session: 54.6%); awareness of personal bias (post-session: 87.9%, pre-session: 70%); partaking in allyship (post-session: 95%, pre-session: 89.5%); and being an active bystander (post-session: 91.4%, pre-session: 45.9%). 79.3% felt confident to challenge acts of discrimination (33.6% pre-session). Conclusions This session educates and empowers students to challenge acts of discrimination. We recommend the implementation of similar sessions at all medical schools.