Exam Preview for 7165: Implicit Bias: Impact on Maternal Health in

Implicit Bias: Impact on Maternal Health in Minority Populations

Please note: exam questions are subject to change.

1. Which statement best distinguishes implicit bias from explicit bias? Implicit bias is always intentional, while explicit bias is accidental. Implicit bias operates automatically and outside conscious awareness, while explicit bias is consciously held and can be reported. Implicit bias affects only patients, while explicit bias affects only clinicians. Implicit and explicit bias are interchangeable terms for the same conscious attitude.
2. Research using measures such as the Implicit Association Test has found that, as a group, healthcare professionals show levels of implicit bias that are: Far lower than the general population because of their training. Similar to those of the general population. Present only among clinicians who hold explicitly prejudiced views. Undetectable by any current method.
3. According to the course, implicit biases are best understood as: Innate traits a person is born with. Deliberate choices clinicians make under stress. Associations learned over a lifetime through socialization from culture, media, language, and institutions. Conditions that appear suddenly in adulthood without prior exposure.
4. A team wants to examine and track its members’ awareness and mitigation of bias in maternity care over time. Which approach is most consistent with the evidence presented? Rely on each clinician’s personal impression of how unbiased they are. Use a single mandatory training and consider the issue resolved afterward. Use a validated instrument to measure awareness and mitigation and track change, embedded in ongoing reflection. Avoid measurement because bias cannot be assessed.
5. How does the power differential in a clinical encounter most directly worsen the effect of a clinician’s bias on a patient? It eliminates the clinician’s biases entirely. It gives the clinician control over the interpretation and documentation of the encounter and makes it costly for patients to push back, so biased expectations can shape care and erode trust. It applies only to patients who are also clinicians. D. It guarantees that patient concerns reach the entire team. It guarantees that patient concerns reach the entire team.
6. A postpartum patient tells a therapist that she feels her concerns were dismissed by the care team. The most appropriate framing of this report is that it is: A complaint to be managed and minimized. Irrelevant to clinical safety. Evidence that the patient is a difficult historian. Clinical information about the patient’s experience that should be treated as data and escalated as appropriate.
7. Which statement best describes structural racism as presented in this course? It requires an individual clinician to hold prejudiced beliefs in order to cause harm. It refers only to historical events with no present-day effects. It operates through laws, policies, practices, and norms that maintain disadvantage even without any individual intending harm. It affects employment but not health outcomes.
8. The Black and White disparity in maternal mortality persists across higher levels of education and income. The course presents this finding as evidence that: Socioeconomic status fully explains the disparity The disparity is driven by racism rather than by race or by poverty alone. The disparity disappears among college-educated patients. Race is a biological cause of poor outcomes.
9. Based on 2023 United States data presented in the course, which ordering of maternal mortality rates is correct? Black women had a rate (about 50 per 100,000) more than three times the White rate (about 15 per 100,000), with Hispanic and Asian rates lower than the White rate. Rates were essentially equal across racial and ethnic groups. White women had the highest rate, followed by Black women. Asian women had the highest rate, followed by Hispanic women.
10. Which statement about infant mortality and its ties to maternal health is correct? Infant mortality is unrelated to the health of the mother or the course of pregnancy. The leading contributors to the Black and White infant mortality gap include higher rates of preterm birth and low birth weight, linking the gap back to maternal health and upstream structural forces. Infants born to Black mothers die at a lower rate than infants born to White mothers. Improving maternal health would have no effect on infant outcomes.