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Journal Article Summary
Reducing Negative Stereotypes
Introduction
In the article “Association among Doctor-Patient Communication, Trust, and Patients’
Negative Stereotypes for Healthcare Professionals during COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study”,
talks about the negative impact doctors had on their patients in the year 2020 when COVID was
introduced at its highest peak. While doctors and other healthcare staff was facing this new
challenge so were the patients. These patients were on high alert during this time, felt as though
they weren’t being taken seriously while there were tons of other patients thinking the same
thing. All the healthcare facilities had the interest of the patient at heart, providing risk factors,
limiting the amount of people coming, and even isolation for certain patients. Even with these
factors in place patients still found a way to get their actions across by violence and stigma they
thought the doctors during this time only focused on certain stereotypes. In this article they
introduced the intergroup contact theory. Which felt that could limit the negative stereotypes and
increase patient communication that could lead to a better outcome of patient care. It does take
time to gain trust in the communication among doctors as well as trust in the institute that houses
them. Doctors-patient communication is highly important and has been since COVID.
Hypothesis
This study was trying further to elucidate the association among doctor-patient communication,
trust, and patients’ negative stereotypes for healthcare professionals during the year COVID
happened.
Methodology
Sample/ Procedures
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The sample was taken from January 2020 to April 2020 using cross-sectional study that
was taken from 28 in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Jaingsu, Anhui, Hunan, Xinjiang, and
Guangxi, a total of 2,000 people that participated in this study. If the patients were 18 years of
age or older, volunteered to participate in the study, and provided verbal informed consent, they
were eligible to participate (Wang el al 20203). After participating in this study each person
would receive a gift that would be randomly selected. They also used Questionnaire Star for data
collection after each person had participated. Besides, the responses are administered online,
allowing patients to fill out the questionnaire at their convenience and can ask the researcher
questions (Wang el al 2023). That way the participants didn’t feel pressured or intimidated by
being in this study. Also, they could at any given time if they did feel uncomfortable.
Measures
For system for the study was a questionnaire, but what was used to measure the responses
was SEGUE Framework that was deployed by Makoul, which measured the patients’ ratings for
healthcare professionals’ communication skills. In this scale it had 5 levels: preparation,
requesting information, providing information, understanding the patient, and ending the
consultation. This was basically asking the participants, did the doctor greet you? Were you
treated with respect, things of that nature. All questions were scored on a five-point Likert scale
(1 = “never” and 5 = “all the time”), with higher scores reflecting better patient ratings for
physicians’ communication skills. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the scale was 0.878 (Wang el
al 2023). For the stereotype was done with a medical questionnaire created by Ye, this was sued
to measure patients stereotypes among healthcare professionals. The scale has a total of 24 items,
such as “respect for life” and “professionalism,” all of which are rated on a five-point Likert
scale (1 = “completely disagree” and 5 = “completely agree”), with lower scores indicating a
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stronger patients’ negative stereotypes for healthcare professionals. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient
for this scale was 0.980 (Wang el al 2023). There were two types of questionnaires that were
given among the participants and each one was calculated using a rating-based system.
Results
The results from the 2,000 participants were the demographics of each person. The main
age among these people were 35 years old. strict accordance with the statistical guidelines of
psychometrics and epidemiology, the total number of valid samples recovered was 1445
(72.2%), of which the mean age of the patients was 35.9 years (SD = 11.5) (Wang el al 2023).
Most of these patients/precipitants were not in the older category, which was interesting. As
expected, doctor-patient communication, interpersonal trust, and institution trust were positively
correlated (r = 0.36–0.67, < 0.01). The patients’ negative stereotypes for healthcare professionals
were negatively correlated with doctor-patient communication, interpersonal trust, and institution
trust (r = −0.36 to −0.68, < 0.01) (Wang el al 2023). As you can see by the numbers negative
stereotypes are greater due to communication from the doctors during that time. The study did
accomplish what it set out to do and was that by showing communication among patients and
doctors the negative stereotypes will decrease. Moreover, doctor-patient communication can
indirectly influence patients’ negative stereotypes through trust, suggesting that patients’ trust is
an important psychological process that contributes to patients’ negative stereotypes (Wang el al
2023). This led to more interpersonal trust rather than a system trust, meaning they patients can
have great communication and trust among the doctors they are seeing to help reduce negative
stereotypes.
Practical Significance
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This study was very insightful because during 202o the year of COVID everybody that
includes doctors, nurses, health facility were in confusion and stunned. They have never seen or
dealt with something like this before in modern times. Seeing how negative stereotypes can
come into play here with no doctor interaction or little interaction. The doctors were treating
patients at a fast pace they probably didn’t have time to keep up, I can see the impact that year
had on these people. What shocked me was that a lot of them that participated in this study were
among their thirties, I was excepting more of an older generation to come forward and express
their distaste in that situation. It also goes to show you with this study that younger generations
are active and involved with their health and that is always a good thing. Even today there is still
room for improvement when it comes to trust and communication with providers, there will
always be those that are great and those that pay no mind.
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References
Yao Wang, Xiaoou Bu, Yanjiao Wang, Yawen Du, Yu Liu, Pei Wang, "Association among
Doctor-Patient Communication, Trust, and Patients’ Negative Stereotypes for Healthcare
Professionals during COVID-19: A Cross-Sectional Study", Journal of Nursing Management,
vol. 2023, Article ID 5522135, 8 pages, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/5522135
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