Applying a Black Feminist Epistemology to Perinatal Quality Evaluation

This session introduces participants to Black woman-defined theoretical frameworks that contextualize the manufactured Black maternal health crisis (at the structural level) and quality of clinical practices and behaviors (at the departmental, team, and interpersonal levels). By engaging with these frameworks, participants will gain a more accurate and precise understanding of the systemic failures contributing to violations of quality and patient safety.

Objectives:

Positive Birth Outcomes & Harmful Birth Experiences

This session explores the contrast between institutional definitions of safety and the lived experiences of safety as defined for, by, and with Black mothers. Participants will examine how systemic structures define “being safe” and how these definitions may not align with patient experiences of “feeling safe”. The session emphasizes the importance of community wisdom in shaping perceptions of quality and safety.

Objectives:

Through analyzing the practice of land acknowledgments, this presentation seeks to inspire ethicists to acknowledge the harm of impartiality as a core concept of justice. Through engaging in self-reflection, examination of, and interrogation of the justice principle that ethics as a field can elevate silenced, marginalized, and excluded voices.