Study: Racially Biased Oncologists Spend Less Time with Black Cancer Patients

Many studies have shown the negative effect health providers’ underlying prejudices can have on the doctor-patient relationship and the decisions patients make about their care. And according to a new study, oncologists are not immune.
Some cancer physicians are letting their implicit racial biases get in the way of quality treatment for Black patients.
Researchers at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, Michigan, studied video-recorded interactions between 18 non-Black medical oncologists and 112 of their new African-American patients to see whether the doctors’ unconscious beliefs might come into play. The scientists took notes during the sessions at Detroit-area cancer hospitals, rating the doctors’ bedside manner and tracking the length of the meeting, including the amount of time doctors and patients spoke.

The elderly men had more complications following prostate removal surgery that were associated with higher costs, according to Quoc-Dien Trinh, lead researcher and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, who said the results called into question the notion that African-Americans are genetically predisposed to the cancer.

“My interpretation is that all this talk about Blacks having more biologically aggressive disease and hence worse survival may in fact be more of an access to care or access to treatment problem,” Trinh said in an email to Reuters.

Source: ATLANTA BLACK STAR JUNE