Title: Responding to Discrimination from Patients, Families, and Guests

Authors: L. Tamara Wilson, Marianna Frey, Dylaan Jarmon, Gretchen Shelesky, Henry Maldonado, Rickquel Tripp

This video provides healthcare professionals with practical strategies for recognizing and responding in the moment to discriminatory comments and microaggressions from patients, families, and guests. Through clinical vignettes, the video illustrates both the immediate emotional impact of these encounters and their broader consequences for clinicians’ sense of belonging, well-being, and retention in medicine. This video also emphasizes that responding to discrimination should not rest solely with the individual experiencing it: supervisors and colleagues play an important role by acknowledging the incident, reaffirming the targeted clinician’s belonging and professional worth, and facilitating team debriefing. Ultimately, the video encourages a shared approach in which individual communication skills, supportive team responses, and institutional policies and codes of conduct work together to create healthcare environments where clinicians can address discriminatory behavior while maintaining appropriate boundaries and providing high-quality patient care.