Education in the health professions has for many years included instruction on the importance of asking patients about their backgrounds and beliefs, which may relate to understanding conditions they are experiencing and inform possible treatments. But those who teach future nurses and doctors stress that background is but one characteristic of a person, and that assuming too much based on such backgrounds can be insulting and even dangerous to patients.
Best practice is not to simply offer health professions students lists of stereotypes by racial, ethnic and religious groups. So when word spread last week about a section of a nursing textbook that did just that, many were horrified. Pearson, the publisher, pledged to remove the content.
