Your doctor’s gender and race may bias your treatment outcomes

Persistent prejudice can affect how white patients physically respond to medical care provided by doctors of different races and genders.

Researchers evaluated nearly 200 treatment responses Caucasian patient After being randomly assigned to receive care from a black, white, or Asian male or female doctor.

Caucasian patients appeared to improve faster when treated by a Caucasian male, a US stereotyped physician.

However, there was a twist in the experiment.Each patient unknowingly Placebo medicineThat means it didn’t contain any drugs.

Their reaction suggests that gender and racial prejudices are rooted. Patients on average experienced clearly better physical results after being treated by a white male doctor compared to patients treated by a female or black doctor.

“In this study, a white patient came to a mock clinic and the provider stabbed the patient’s skin with histamine to induce a mild allergic reaction,” explained Lauren Howe, the lead author of the study. ..

“All healthcare providers have given these patients exactly the same treatment for allergic reactions,” said Howe, assistant professor of business at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. In this case, it was a placebo cream. “A fragrance-free hand lotion that the provider said was an antihistamine and reduced the size of allergic reactions.”

Results: “Patients who happened to receive this treatment from a female or black donor had a smaller decrease in the size of their allergic reaction over time,” Howe said.

The research team is race and Gender bias It’s very important. Historically, most doctors in the United States were male and white, but the composition of medical professionals has changed.

As of 2017, more than half of the accepted applicants for medical school were of color, and the majority of accepted applicants were women, according to research background notes.

Participants in the survey lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was all white. The 13 male or female doctors were black, white, or Asian.

The patient underwent an allergic skin prick test and induced mild allergic skin reactions such as raised ridges. Next, each doctor applied a non-medicinal cream for the patient’s allergic reaction.

The skin of each patient was assessed 30 seconds after the placebo cream was applied and then reassessed 3, 6 and 9 minutes later.

Patients treated by female or black physicians were significantly less responsive to drug-free creams than patients treated by male and / or white or Asian physicians.

According to Howe, the findings are: “When a patient enters the clinic, he doesn’t look like the person the doctor has played that role in most of history: the doctor is white-in that case, the patient. May slow down the response to treatment from the doctor in terms of immediate physical response to treatment. “

According to Howe, white patients did not express “implicit prejudice.” In other words, she did not rate female and black doctors as warm and incompetent. Also, they did not express “explicit bias”. That is, it did not express anxiety or nonverbal negative reactions to black or female caregivers.

“In fact, the white patients in this study were highly motivated to be open-minded,” Howe said. “They all reported that they care about being open-minded and tended to be most involved with female and color providers.”

According to her, all point out the problem of deep-seated bias. Positive attitude For healthcare providers, the response to the treatments they gave was not very strong. “

Andrea Roberts is a Senior Research Scientist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. She said that a typical study of racial dynamics in healthcare focuses on how the care of black patients is compromised.

At that score, she said, “Race and gender prejudice in medicine Well documented for a long time. “

However, Roberts, who was not involved in the study, warned that current efforts do not provide conclusive insight into how white prejudice affects the fares of white patients.

She characterized the findings as “most guesses on the part of the researchers” because she did not show that her data were negative. bias For female and black providers. “

The survey results are published in the June 27 issue. Minutes of the National Academy of Sciences.

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