Cristina M. Gonzalez, MD

My lab's mission is to contribute to achieving health equity by transforming medical education at a national level. In support of that transformation, we focus on developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions that equip health professionals with the skills to optimize the outcomes with patients within the clinical encounter. Our target audience is health professionals across the spectrum of training and practice. We seek to improve clinicians' skills (including our own) to enable all patients across personal identities to have positive experiences, dignified encounters, and excellent, equitable outcomes. 

Our strongest focus is on addressing the negative impacts of implicit bias. We have developed a patient-informed, skills-based, behavioral framework called implicit bias recognition and management (IBRM). IBRM is a two-fold process: 1) Recognize when implicit bias has impacted an interaction with a patient; and 2) Manage the negative impact of bias to restore rapport with the patient and achieve the excellent outcomes we intend in the first place. This framework accounts for actual bias on the part of the clinician (i.e. an assumption we might make) and it accounts for perceived bias by the patient (due to their lived experience) on a statement or procedure that we might otherwise deem routine. IBRM was initially developed through research with patients, then further refined through research with students and faculty. Patients' perspectives have informed all of our interventions. Interventions focus on optimizing both verbal and nonverbal communication skills. 

My lab has also developed the experimental model to test interventions seeking to address implicit bias in a simulated setting. This advancement allows clinicians to learn and practice new skills without risking harming patients- key to patient safety and health equity.

More recently we have expanded from communication skills into research on addressing the impact of implicit bias on the diagnostic process.

We have benefitted from the ideas and contributions of many collaborators- from high school and college students, through medical students and trainees, and interprofessional colleagues and faculty at all career levels. We welcome any inquiries from those interested in medical education, health professions education, and/or health equity.