6 in 10 doctors report abusive remarks from patients, and many get little help coping with the wounds
This story was produced in collaboration with WebMD and Medscape.
Most doctors have absorbed racist, sexist, and other bigoted verbal remarks from patients under their care, according to a new national survey. And in interviews, physicians say these ugly incidents, while not frequent, can leave lasting scars.
African-American doctors told STAT they had been called racial epithets and been asked to relinquish care for white patients by family members — and even colleagues. Asian-American physicians reported being demeaned with longstanding cultural and racist stereotypes, and female doctors being sexually harassed by patients during physical exams.
A wide-ranging survey of more than 800 U.S. physicians, conducted by WebMD and Medscape in collaboration with STAT, found that 59 percent had heard offensive remarks about a personal characteristic in the past five years — chiefly about a doctor’s youthfulness, gender, race, or ethnicity. As a result, 47 percent had a patient request a different doctor, or ask to be referred to a clinician other than the one their physician selected.
Fourteen percent said they had experienced situations in which the patient complained, in writing, about the doctor’s personal characteristics.
African-American and Asian-American physicians were more likely to face such attacks, and female doctors were more often the victims of bias than males. But patients found targets in every imaginable corner: 12 percent of physicians, for instance, endured offensive remarks about their weight.
Amid a heated national conversation about open expressions of prejudice in America, the survey spotlights a facet of the issue that has, so far, received little attention: the biases patients direct toward their doctors in hospitals and exam rooms.
“I’ve certainly not read anything like this,” said Dr. Beth A. Lown, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and medical director of the Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare.
To explore issues raised in the survey,
