Learning Objectives:

At the end of this video learners will:

• Ask people for their pronouns when it’s safe and appropriate to do so
• Use neutral language when talking about someone if they do not know how the person identifies
• Apologize in a healthy way if they misgender someone or mess up in another way
• Thank people who correct them on pronouns, and work to do better
• Understand that if they misgender someone and the person corrects them, that correction is an opportunity to change language and behavior to be more inclusive

Reflection Questions:

• How do you feel about being asked to use or corrected to use they/them pronouns for an individual? What about ze/zir pronouns? Do those two pronoun sets feel different to you?
• Can you think of a time when your implicit bias affected your interaction with a patient?
• Have you witnessed the impact of implicit bias during a patient encounter? How did it make you feel to witness that?
• Can you think of a recent patient interaction in which you would have been able to use the strategies you learned in this course if you had known them beforehand? If so, please describe.

Presented by: Aspen Ruhlin (they/them/theirs)
Community Advocate, Mabel Wadsworth Clinic

In this do’s and don’ts video, Aspen goes over some common mistakes around language, pronouns, and assumptions and explains how to fix them.

Additional Don’ts

• Don’t assume the pregnant person is the mother or that the other person/partner is the father
• Don’t assume the number of partners a person has
• Don’t assume that a pregnant person has a partner at all