Microaggressions in neurorehabilitation

Ethnic minorities often report poorer experiences of health care services. One factor is thought to be related to the Eurocentricity of services which can lead to unconscious biases, sometimes in the form of racial microaggressions. These are found to be related to anxiety, anger, distress, and depression. Exposure to these in services can lead to mistrust including reduced help-seeking behaviours and poorer health outcomes.

The review explores the experiences of microaggressions in health care settings and the impact of this on service users. A review of the literature found 17 American and Canadian based articles that met the inclusion criteria. The papers were quality assessed and an integrative systematic review was conducted. Three main categories were identified: The measurement of racial microaggressive experiences (e.g., studies used either quantitative questionnaires and/or qualitative methods), impacts of microaggressions in care settings (this was measured through questionnaires such as client satisfaction and psychological wellbeing etc), and the types of microaggressive experiences, which identified common themes of microaggressions in questionnaires and qualitative responses.

Clinical implications include the need for clinicians to become more aware of biases, to help generate more inclusive clinical practices that are culturally sensitive to help meet the needs of individuals from ethnically minoritised backgrounds. Research implications include the need to explore the experiences of microaggressions in health care settings in the UK and moving away from using self-report measures to explore microaggressive experiences.