Here at PsychEd, we value the importance of diverse perspectives, experiences, and opinions on our team and within the field of psychiatry.
Early in our development, we noticed that many of our expert interviewers were of the same gender and ethnicity, even though our podcast team was fairly diverse. We suspected that this was, at least partly, due to an unconscious bias about what it means to be an “expert” within medicine. We felt our profession deserved better.
As a team, we strive to create an environment that allows all members to feel valued, included, and empowered to bring great ideas to the table. As producers, we want to engage with our audience in a way that reflects and respects their unique perspectives and experiences. And as curators of this show, we also value the importance of diversity in the expert opinions we solicit and are mindful that a breadth of voices, experiences, and viewpoints are a strength.
While this has long been a key component of our mandate, we feel that now more than ever it is vital to stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and hold ourselves accountable to these commitments. To this end, we are sharing the following diversity and inclusion efforts, which are part of our Diversity and Equity policy, with you in the hopes that we can engage in meaningful dialogue around these important issues:
Developing and implementing bylaws that ensure our board and membership reflect our larger Canadian community in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, level of training, and geography.
Continuing to build on our equitable process for interviewee/expert selection which takes into account the limited representation of women and minorities in senior academic and leadership positions in psychiatry and medicine at large.
Actively soliciting feedback from our listeners on how well we are meeting these objectives.
Assessing our diversity and inclusion objectives and achievements on an annual basis to ensure we are living our values, meeting our goals, and exploring avenues for further improvement.
Continuing to ensure our episodes reflect our commitment to addressing inequity for people with mental illness.
Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns (you can email us at psychedpodcast@gmail.com). We would love to hear your thoughts and opinions and look forward to striving toward a more diverse and equitable educational landscape with your help.