Clinical Corner - August 2022

The concepts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have appropriately become important goals for healthcare enterprises, corporate entities, professional organizations and academic institutions. It is important that these concepts are also being emphasized in professional schools, especially medical schools, where the future generations of physicians are being trained. Twenty-four medical schools throughout the nation will revamp their education curricula, creating programs incorporating DEI into training.

A second important outgrowth of the DEI movement is the incorporation of these concepts into healthcare outcomes that affect all patients and especially cancer patients. This awareness has resulted from the appropriate use of patient data found especially in our cancer registries and the work product of each of our dedicated cancer registrars.

One important goal for all who work in the registry is to educate all of our colleagues as to the power of registry data in uncovering DEI-related shortcomings in cancer management. This is also a wonderful opportunity for cancer registrars to play a leading role in developing research projects that will highlight DEI needs for improving cancer care.

Finally, we must review our coding strategies and our abstract data to assure that all relevant information regarding demographics are included. As newer generations of physicians are being trained in the principles of reducing healthcare disparities related to DEI, the need to introduce the neophyte clinician to the cancer registry is more critical than ever.

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