Role of Provider Education in Impacting Diagnostic Inequities

Dr. Dana Powell Baker: Absolutely. And it's absolutely critical that we prioritize provider education and how they play a key and vital role in providing accurate information to our patients. They are the ones directly interacting with patients. They have that patient-facing encounter with our patients, they are the trusted face. And so as the face for the profession, especially when it comes to female diagnostic test, they are trusting and open to what the provider is sharing with them. And in order for that information to be accurate and relevant, it is important for us to have that provider education in place.

One, it creates that opportunity for interprofessional engagement and understanding that it does take a team, whether is a team behind the scenes that is providing that quality level of care for our patients. Slide 9 And so sometimes that takes knowledge-sharing, that takes interacting to share what best practices or relevant practices, especially when it comes to diagnostic testing, are available to that educator or provider interacting with that patient. It takes that teamwork, that effective communication to actually relay what symptoms they may be seeing that we may not be privy to in our profession. So again, by having that open dialogue, especially between laboratory professionals and those medical providers that are directly engaging with our patients, it's only going to optimize outcomes, it's going to improve what we see in terms of disparities, as well as advanced equity among our female patients.