Nancy Berlinger, PhD and Annalise Berlinger, BSN, RN
Physicians’ reliance on “culture” to explain patients’ noncompliance may serve as code for their discomfort with difference, uncertainty, and distress.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(6):608-616. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.6.msoc1-1706.
Immigrant patients are often bewildered when they need to seek health care in the U.S., and that care usually comes from physicians who are unsympathetic to their plight.
When residents make discriminatory jokes about patients, they are not only setting a bad example for the medical students they work with, but harming patient care.
Rates of referral to a cardiologist, which markedly improves cardiovascular outcomes, differ significantly based on nonclinical patient characteristics.