Mrs Nina Roxburgh1
1Monash University, Australia
Biography:
Nina Roxburgh is currently completing her PhD at Monash Bioethics Centre, Monash University. Her research focuses on digital health ethics and health policy. She is one of the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre's Emerging Leaders and she has previously worked in youth policy and advocacy, with a particular focus in research and community activation around social determinants of health. Nina holds a Master of Bioethics and a Bachelor of International Relations (with Honours).
Abstract:
Epistemic injustices are prevalent in health care, with numerous cases and stories of people engaging with the health system being discredited, dismissed or their testimonies devalued regarding their ability to know, understanding of events and experiences, or their perception of the world around them ‘as it is’. Recently, headlines have burgeoned in news media and pop culture highlighting the nature and expanse of epistemic injustice in health care, such as ‘The Retrievals’ podcast detailing the harrowing experiences of women at the Yale IVF Clinic, Serena Williams’ essay regarding her traumatic childbirth experience in Elle Magazine, the cochlear implant crisis at Adelaide Women and Children’s Hospital, and the recent launch of the Inquiry into Women’s Pain in Victoria; all demonstrating the possibility for peoples’ health experiences and outcomes, as told by them, to be unjustly disbelieved, overlooked, or ignored in relation to other information and perspectives.
So how can the health system and those working in it correct this ongoing issue? In this talk, I present an argument for the role that patient-reported measures may play in addressing or, at least, reducing epistemic injustices occurring in health care. I argue that patient-reported measures, which are currently inconsistently used to collect patient perspectives on their outcomes and experiences of care, can be repurposed for enshrining patient voice in health data to mitigate epistemic injustice. In addition, I argue that doing so reduces the reliance on individual health professionals to mitigate personal biases or prejudices (though does not remove this obligation entirely).