Racial Upstander Policy
Racial Upstander Policy
The UCLA Psychiatry Residency Training Program has a racial upstander policy entitled “Community Expectations: Confronting Racism in the Psychiatric Workplace.” This policy provides guidance on how to address instances of racism in our daily work. We recognize that acts of racism negatively affect the wellness of all members of our Residency Training Community and should prompt an immediate response by both the clinical team and residency leadership. By outlining our shared expectations in response to instances of racism, we are taking an important step toward creating a more inclusive educational environment for all of our trainees in an explicitly anti-racist framework.
A key component of the immediate response involves the creation of an upstander culture where all witnesses to racism are responsible for actively responding and supporting the recipient of racism. Our JEDI office and Psychiatry Diversity Advisory Committee conduct trainings for trainees, faculty, and other on strategies to confront racism. We require that all instances of racial violence be reported to appropriate incident reporting systems such as the UCLA Safety Opportunities for Improvement Reporting (SOFI) System or the Mistreatment Incident Reporting Form (MIRF). We also require responses from residency program directors and our JEDI office to ensure that appropriate responses have taken place, track incident reports, and support the needs of residents (including providing work coverage and emotional support as necessary).