Caught this blog entry from an Asian American doctor and I just wanted to post a little bit on it as I thought it was a good read:
While there are probably multiple factors involved, researchers over the past decade have looked at how patients’ and doctors’ race and ethnicity might contribute to these disparities. One of the leading researchers in this area is Dr. Somnath Saha at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Dr. Saha and his colleagues have shown that minority patients and white patients report better health care experiences when their doctors are of the same race or ethnicity .There's a lot more to the post - catch it here.
But as my residency colleague, Eric, could attest, race and ethnicity can also influence the experiences of minority physicians. A recent study by Dr. Irena Stepanikova from the University of South Carolina notes that white patients who had non-white physicians were more likely to report a medical error than white patients with white doctors.
And for anyone that reads it, I wonder if you'll ask yourself the same question that I did when you read a specific line.
