Prejudiced responses in patient-physician communication? no evidence for across-the-board unintended effects in majority patients

Abstract

There is evidence indicating that ethnic concordance in patient–physician communication beneficially contributes to positive outcomes in minority patients. As minority patients tend to have less positive health outcomes compared to majority patients and reducing health inequalities is a global imperative, striving for the establishment of a more diverse physician workforce can be deemed a valuable public health goal. Research has yet to show that there are no undesired unintended effects in majority patients. In fact, majority patients might show less positive outcomes when interacting with a minority physician based on their prejudice. We conducted a web-based experiment in which individuals (N = 305 German “majority” patients) were randomly assigned to a hypothetical medical consultation in which a physician—Dr. Çağdaş Kılıç (“minority” physician condition) or Dr. Thomas Kirsch (“majority” physician condition)—talked about lifestyle factors associated with chronic non-communicable diseases. Using equivalence testing, we found no substantial differences regarding beliefs toward the physician, reactance-related outcomes, and prevention-related knowledge transfer between both experimental conditions. Therefore, the present study provides no evidence for across-the-board unintended effects in majority patients. This finding supports the establishment of a more diverse physician workforce as a valuable public health goal.