Diversifying and Decolonizing Oral Medicine’s Clinical Images in Health Science Teaching: Rectifying Colonial and Racial Biases Through the Creation of an Interactive e-Resource
摘要
The ability to take, use, and interpret clinical photographs is a key clinical and professional competency in dentistry. Clinical photographs aid diagnoses, record the progression of disease and its hopeful resolution via treatment, and are key research and teaching materials. However, thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and decolonizing the curriculum’ movement, healthcare has come to realize the “Whiteness” of healthcare scholarship, the predominance of White patients in clinical photographs, and its adverse impact on the clinical and diagnostic skills of healthcare professionals. In contrast, the debate about diversifying and decolonizing dental clinical photography and its impact on practice is still in its infancy in dentistry. Using decolonization scholarship as a framework for analysis, this chapter adopts a critical lens to the work achieved thus far and further work that is needed to be done with respect to diversifying and decolonizing the discipline in dentistry. Inspired by this knowledge and research gap in dentistry, we also provide details of an educational e-resource developed by the authors that foregrounded the use of clinical images with patients of dark(er) skins with an aim to improve undergraduate students’ knowledge of the clinical presentation of oral diseases in ethnically diverse patient populations as well as to improve their diagnostic skills. The chapter will include a summary of this process and student evaluations of the resource. It will conclude with reflections on the design, rollout, and integration of this teaching initiative into the undergraduate curriculum and include recommendations for educators across the healthcare sector interested in creating a similar e-resource tailored to their curriculum.