A recent study found there was no correlation between acute care surgical clinicians’ unconscious race and/or social class biases and their patient management decisions. Results were published online in JAMA Surgery (doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2014.4038).
In this study, the researchers conducted a web-based survey with physicians from Dec. 1, 2011 through Jan. 31, 2012. They mentioned previous studies showed that minority and socially disadvantaged patients had significant health inequities.
The researched administered eight clinical vignettes with three management questions apiece that assessed the relationship between unconscious bias and clinical decision making. The main outcome measure was differential response times on the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
Of the 215 physicians, 74 were attending surgeons, 32 were fellows, 86 were residents, 19 were interns and 4 physicians had an undetermined level of education. The most common specialties were surgery (32.1 percent), anesthesia (18.1 percent) and emergency medicine (18.1 percent).
The mean IAT score was 0.42 for race and 0.71 for social class. Women demonstrated less bias compared with men. The researchers said race and class scores were similar across departments, race and age.
After conducting a univariate analysis, the researchers found there was an association between race/social class basis and three of the 27 possible patient-care decisions. There was no association between the IAT scores and vignette-based clinical assessments, according to the researchers.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.