Racial Inequities, Shared Decision-Making, and Trauma-Informed Critical Care with Dr. Deepshikha Ashana

In this episode, Kirk and Amelia speak with Dr. Deepshikha Ashana about her research on racial disparities present in shared decision-making practices in critical care. Dr. Ashana shares how her research interests were motivated by her personal observations of racial disparities, from her childhood in India, her experience moving to the US, and her education in Philadelphia. Her recent research thematically analyzed audio recordings of conversations between families and clinicians of critical care patients, using inductive analysis to identify four ways that communication behaviors differed in clinicians’ engagement with racially minoritized families. She discussed the racialized empathy gap, how cultural health capital is received differently from Black versus white families, and the striking disagreements in self-reports of conflict between cli ...