Service Description

Patients and healthcare practitioners can leave conversations with across differences with very different ideas of what was just said. This is an intermediate workshop that highlights the relationship between institutionalized isms (like racism, ableism, transgender/heterosexism) and highlights how people with institutional privilege and good intentions may speak in ways that are heard by those in oppressed groups as racist, ableist, sexist or transgender/ heterosexist. For example, "We are all human" can be heard as "because we are human, I refuse to acknowledge racism and the effects racism has on you." Such miscommunication inhibits the trust needed in our professional practice. This workshop includes detailed examples of listening to the complex territory of conversations that happen in professional healthcare practices regarding demographic differences and privileged/oppressed social positions. I describe how to zone in on the language about difference that acknowledge the traumatic experience of isms and demonstrate respect, support and being an ally in the face of oppression.