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- Page navigation anchor for RE: Gaslighting in academic medicine - Learning from discomfortRE: Gaslighting in academic medicine - Learning from discomfort
I wanted to thank Dr. Watson-Creed for her insightful work on gaslighting in academic medicine
and introducing CMAJ’s readership to the concept of institutional betrayal. This kind of analysis
is critical in this moment in time, as healthcare institutions and the people that work in them
grapple with the ways in which they have participated or been complicit in institutionally racist
practices. Dr. Watson-Creed highlights the ways in which gaslighting behaviours on the part of
individuals or institutions results in both institutional and organizational damage, and uncovers
the true ‘hidden curriculum’ of our organizations. Critically, she notes that “within the realm
of institutional betrayal, gaslighting behaviour signals organizational willingness to protect
those who hold the balance of power to act on damaging beliefs regarding equity-deserving
groups, so as to protect their unearned privilege.” (1, pE1451)Learning about one’s unearned privilege can be unsettling. For those of us working in
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healthcare, learning that we have enacted harm can be a major source of discomfort – so
uncomfortable, in fact, that we may be tempted to participate in some gaslighting of our own –
minimizing the impact that anti-Black racism has had on our communities and
institutions, minimizing our personal or institutional role, or even minimizing or delegitimizing
the work published in these two very i...Competing Interests: None declared.References
- 1. Watson-Creed, G. Gaslighting in academic medicine: where anti-Black racism lives. CMAJ 2022; 194(42) E1451-E1454.
- 2. Harbin A, Beagan B, Goldberg L. Discomfort, judgment, and health care for queers. J Bioethical Inq 2012; 9: 149–60.
- 3. hooks, b. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Pluto Press.
- 4. Zembylas, M. (2018). Affect, race, and white discomfort in schooling: Decolonial strategies for ‘pedagogies of discomfort’. Ethics and Education, 13(1), 86-104.