Doctors Have Skin Color Bias
July 22, 2007
A new study finds that most doctors have an unconscious bias that results in them giving quicker and better treatment to whites than African American patients
A new study has found that when it comes to providing medical care, a person’s skin color plays a considerable role in determining who is treated first.
The study, performed by the Disparities Solutions Center, found that doctors are more likely to give prompt medical care to whites over African Americans, due to an unconscious bias.
“We found that as doctors’ unconscious biases against blacks increased, their likelihood of giving [clot-busting] treatment decreased,” said the lead author of the study, Dr. Alexander R. Green of Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s not a matter of you being a racist. It’s really a matter of the way your brain processes information is influenced by things you’ve seen, things you’ve experienced, the way media has presented things.”
Internet Pharmacy - Buy Pharmacy at reasanoble prices.Internet Pharmacy provides confortable and easy way to order pharmacy via internet.”Years of advanced education and egalitarian intentions are no protection against the effect of implicit attitudes,” said Dr. Thomas Inui, president of the Regenstrief Institute Inc. in Indianapolis, which studies vulnerable patient groups. “When do they surface? When we’re involved with high-pressure, high-stakes decision-making, when there’s a lot riding on our decisions but there isn’t a lot of time to make them, that’s when the implicit attitudes that are not scientific rise up and grab us.”
The study is the first of its kind to look into the unconscious racial bias that most doctors have when it comes to providing medical care for African Americans. It was performed using more than 200 participants who were training to become doctors. The participants were presented with two patients, one white and one black, both of which presenting with signs of a heart attack. The researchers found that the doctors were more likely to agressively treat the white patient than the black patient.
The study is published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Posted by toshko under Skin Care News |
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