In a recent survey of more than 6,500 physicians from across the United States representing a broad spectrum of racial and ethnic diversity, nearly 30% of respondents reported experiencing discrimination and mistreatment from patients or patients’ family members or visitors.
Further, close to 20% of responding physicians had experiences in which patients or their family members or visitors refused to allow the physician to care for them because of the physician’s racial or ethnic attributes or gender.
“This is a staggering number,” says Lotte Dyrbye, MD, senior associate dean of faculty and chief well-being officer at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “Simply having patients or family members say, ‘No, you can’t provide care because of the way you look’ – not because of competency – is really heartbreaking.”
Ad Statistics
Times Displayed: 3899
Times Visited: 9 Stay up to date with the latest training to fix, troubleshoot, and maintain your critical care devices. GE HealthCare offers multiple training formats to empower teams and expand knowledge, saving you time and money.
In research published today, Dyrbye and her co-researchers surveyed more than 6,500 physicians nationwide about their experiences with mistreatment and discrimination in the course of doing their jobs. The research was conducted in collaboration with the American Medical Association (AMA).
“We wanted to understand how often it was happening, who it was happening to, and what are some of the intersections between race, ethnicity, and gender and physician mistreatment,” Dyrbye explains. “We were interested in exploring the relationship between having negative interactions with patients, visitors, and family members and physicians’ likelihood of being burned out.”
Physicians frequently experience discrimination
Throughout her career, Dyrbye, who joined CU this month in her new role, has conducted extensive research on clinician burnout. She co-authored “Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being,” a consensus study for the National Academy of Medicine, and co-developed the Well-Being Index, a validated online self-assessment tool for clinicians.
Her research has considered the stressors associated with working in health care, including aspects of the work environment that can lead to physician burnout. Among those stressors are racially or ethnically offensive remarks, unwanted sexual advances, and gender-based discrimination that can be a significant factor in physician burnout.
Dyrbye and her co-researchers have partnered with the AMA on large national surveys tracking trends in physician burnout for more than a decade. The first survey was in 2011, followed by 2014, 2017, and 2020.
