PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Pediatricians' pain-medication judgments affected by unconscious racial bias, says UW study

2012-03-20
(Press-News.org) Pediatricians who show an unconscious preference for European Americans tend to prescribe better pain-management for white patients than they do for African-American patients, new University of Washington research shows.

Pediatricians responded to case scenarios involving medical treatments for white and African American patients for four common pediatric conditions.

"We're talking about subtle, unconscious attitudes that are pervasive in society. Because these are unconscious attitudes, doctors aren't aware that their racial attitudes may affect their treatment decisions," said Janice Sabin, a UW research assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Medical Education, a part of UW's School of Medicine.

She is lead author of the study published March 15 in the American Journal of Public Health.

Sabin's previous research showed that pediatricians display less unconscious race bias than other medical doctors or the general population. Still, unconscious beliefs can affect how doctors interact with patients, and the current study reveals that those attitudes can influence doctors' treatment decisions.

"Coupled with known racial and ethnic disparities in health care, our findings suggest that well-meaning physicians may unconsciously treat people differently in some areas of care," said Sabin.

Among the 86 pediatricians who participated in the study, 65 percent were female, 82 percent were white and 59 percent were medical residents or fellows. They completed three Implicit Association Tests to measure unconscious attitudes and beliefs.

The test was developed in 1998 by Anthony Greenwald, a co-author and a UW psychology professor. The test measures implicit attitudes by asking participants to quickly classify several series of words or visual images as they appear on a computer screen. The patterns of speeds in response to varied classification instructions can reveal automatically operating biases.

Sabin chose four conditions commonly treated by pediatricians – asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, urinary tract infections and pain. Case scenarios were created for each condition for both an African-American and a white patient.

For the asthma, ADHD and urinary tract infection case scenarios, doctors did not show an association between unconscious attitudes about race and treatment decisions for the two patients. However, recommendations for optimal pain treatment decreased for the African American patient as doctors' pro-white bias increased.

"Implicit biases are surprisingly pervasive, and in certain circumstances they can affect how people behave," Sabin said. She said her findings "indicate that more research should be done to see if unconscious biases affect real-world medical care and treatment decisions, especially for pain management."

"This is exactly the type of result that was anticipated by the Institute of Medicine's landmark 2002 Unequal Treatment study," Greenwald said. "That study and other studies found, among other indications of troubling health care disparities, underuse of pain medication for African American patients."

Because physicians are likely unaware of unconscious attitudes and beliefs and the unintended disparities that may result, incorporating awareness of personal bias and methods to avoid the influence of bias on decision-making into medical education, continuing medical education and training of health professionals is necessary for health sciences education, Sabin suggested.

###

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Institute of Mental Health and a University of Washington Magnuson Health Scholars Award funded the study.

For more information, contact Sabin at 206-616-9421 or sabinja@uw.edu.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

AsiaRooms.com - Thanyapura Long Course Swim Championships Coming to Phuket

2012-03-20
Some of Asia's most talented swimmers will be travelling to Phuket this April in order to take part in the hotly-contested 2012 Thanyapura Long Course Swim Championships.   To be held at the Thanyapura Sports & Leisure Club from April 6th to 8th, the event will see athletes from international swimming clubs based across the continent all competing.   It represents the first long course swim championship to be held in Phuket, with participants set to compete in the facility's 50-metre Olympic-standard swimming pool.   The event will run from 09:00 until 17:00 local ...

Diagnosis of ADHD on the rise

2012-03-20
CHICAGO --- The number of American children leaving doctors' offices with an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis has risen 66 percent in 10 years, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Over this same timeframe, specialists, instead of primary care physicians, have begun treating an increasing number of these young patients, the study found. The study, which was published in the March/April issue of the journal Academic Pediatrics, analyzed ADHD trends from 2000 to 2010 among children under the age of 18 who were diagnosed and treated by ...

Integrative Psychiatrists Richard P. Brown and Patricia Gerbarg Teach Interactive Online Breath~Body~Mind Public Workshop for Stress Reduction, April 14-15, 2012 from Fellowships of the Spirit

Integrative Psychiatrists Richard P. Brown and Patricia Gerbarg Teach Interactive Online Breath~Body~Mind Public Workshop for Stress Reduction, April 14-15, 2012 from Fellowships of the Spirit
2012-03-20
Richard P. Brown, MD, and Patricia Gerbarg, MD, award-winning authors and leaders in Complementary and Alternative Medicine for psychiatry, will teach their ground-breaking Breath~Body~Mind Workshop for Beginners and Intermediate Students live online Saturday, April 14, from 10 am to 5 pm ET, and Sunday, April 15, from 10 am to 4 pm ET. The event will be broadcast from Fellowships of the Spirit in Lilydale NY, for the general public, health professionals, caregivers, and yoga teachers. "People inquire about our Breath~Body~Mind workshops because they want to enhance ...

Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change

Focus on technology overlooks human behavior when addressing climate change
2012-03-20
EUGENE, Ore. -- Technology alone won't help the world turn away from fossil fuel-based energy sources, says University of Oregon sociologist Richard York. In a newly published paper, York argues for a shift in political and economic policies to embrace the concept that continued growth in energy consumption is not sustainable. Many nations, including the United States, are actively pursuing technological advances to reduce the use of fossil fuels to potentially mitigate human contributions to climate-change. The approach of the International Panel on Climate Change assumes ...

Health must be central to climate change policies, say experts

2012-03-20
Health must be taken into account in climate change mitigation strategies. It is not widely appreciated that there are many benefits to health that are likely to accrue from a low carbon economy, say experts in a special supplement published on bmj.com today. They believe that health professionals "are uniquely placed to guide the climate change conversation towards better policies that are good for the planet and for people." It follows a high level meeting, hosted by the BMJ in October 2011, where doctors and security experts warned that climate change poses an immediate ...

Ventana Research Releases Fast, Clean Close Benchmark Research and Education Services

Ventana Research Releases Fast, Clean Close Benchmark Research and Education Services
2012-03-20
Ventana Research has released its newest benchmark research, "Trends in Developing the Fast, Clean Close: Refining Financial Processes and Systems for Best Execution." Completing the accounting cycle quickly and accurately is essential for any finance organization. Not only is this a good indicator of efficiency, but also the speed in which books are closed has a number of ramifications. It can affect how rapidly a company is able to prepare data management reports, and the sooner managers have this information, the sooner they understand their situation. This ...

Polycrystalline diamond drill bits open up options for geothermal energy

Polycrystalline diamond drill bits open up options for geothermal energy
2012-03-20
Nearly two-thirds of the oil we use comes from wells drilled using polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bits, originally developed nearly 30 years ago to lower the cost of geothermal drilling. Sandia and the U.S. Navy recently brought the technology fullcircle, showing how geothermal drillers might use the original PDC technology, incorporating decades of subsequent improvements by the oil and gas industry. Sandia and the Navy's Geothermal Program Office (USN GPO) conducted the Phase One demonstration tests as part of a geothermal resources evaluation at the Chocolate ...

New antibiotic could make food safer and cows healthier

New antibiotic could make food safer and cows healthier
2012-03-20
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Food-borne diseases might soon have another warrior to contend with, thanks to a new molecule discovered by chemists at the University of Illinois. The new antibiotic, an analog of the widely used food preservative nisin, also has potential to be a boon to the dairy industry as a treatment for bovine mastitis. The antibiotic nisin occurs naturally in milk, a product of bacteria resident in the cow's udder. It helps keep milk from spoiling and kills a broad spectrum of bacteria that cause food-borne illness, most notably listeria and clostridium. It was ...

New research about facial recognition turns common wisdom on its head

2012-03-20
A team of researchers that includes a USC scientist has methodically demonstrated that a face's features or constituents – more than the face per se – are the key to recognizing a person. Their study, which goes against the common belief that brains process faces "holistically," appears this month in Psychological Science. In addition to shedding light on the way the brain functions, these results may help scientists understand rare facial recognition disorders. Humans are great at recognizing faces. There are even regions in the brain that are specifically associated ...

Population age and inpatient care

2012-03-20
The effect of population aging on the number of admissions to hospital for inpatient treatment is examined by epidemiologist Enno Nowossadeck in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[9]: 151-7. Germany's population is steadily growing older, and the number of hospital admissions is increasing. By taking nationwide statistics on hospital treatment in the years 2000 and 2009 and classifying the patients by year of birth, sex, and diagnosis, the author investigates whether these two trends are connected. His analysis reveals, ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Less intensive works best for agricultural soil

Arctic rivers project receives “national champion” designation from frontiers foundation

Computational biology paves the way for new ALS tests

Study offers new hope for babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome

UT, Volkswagen Group of America celebrate research partnership

New Medicare program could dramatically improve affordability for cancer drugs – if patients enroll

Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes

University of Cincinnati Cancer Center presents research at AACR 2025

Head and neck, breast, lung and survivorship studies headline Dana-Farber research at AACR Annual Meeting 2025

AACR: Researchers share promising results from MD Anderson clinical trials

New research explains why our waistlines expand in middle age

Advancements in muon detection: Taishan Antineutrino Observatory's innovative top veto tracker

Chips off the old block

Microvascular decompression combined with nerve combing for atypical trigeminal neuralgia

Cutting the complexity from digital carpentry

Lung immune cell type “quietly” controls inflammation in COVID-19

Fiscal impact of expanded Medicare coverage for GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat obesity

State and sociodemographic trends in US cigarette smoking with future projections

Young adults drive historic decline in smoking

NFCR congratulates Dr. Robert C. Bast, Jr. on receiving the AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research

Chimpanzee stem cells offer new insights into early embryonic development

This injected protein-like polymer helps tissues heal after a heart attack

FlexTech inaugural issue launches, pioneering interdisciplinary innovation in flexible technology

In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity

Methyl eugenol: potential to inhibit oxidative stress, address related diseases, and its toxicological effects

A vascularized multilayer chip reveals shear stress-induced angiogenesis in diverse fluid conditions

AI helps unravel a cause of Alzheimer's disease and identify a therapeutic candidate

Coalition of Autism Scientists critiques US Department of Health and Human Services Autism Research Initiative

Structure dictates effectiveness, safety in nanomedicine

Mission accomplished for the “T2T” Hong Kong Bauhinia Genome Project

[Press-News.org] Pediatricians' pain-medication judgments affected by unconscious racial bias, says UW study