Society
Black Patients Are More Often Described Negatively by Doctors, Study Finds
The findings aren’t meant to police language, the lead researcher said, but to get providers to describe patients more compassionately.
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A first of its kind study assessing language used in medical records at a Chicago medical center finds health-care providers more often describe Black patients with “negative descriptors,” such as “non-compliant” and “agitated,” compared to White people in the sample.
Black people were 2.54 times more likely to have one or more “negative descriptors” in their medical records, even when adjusted for sociodemographic and health characteristics, a study to be published in the February issue of Health Affairs finds.