229229 A Meta-Analysis on Discrimination in Health care and Its Impact on Health Outcome

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Rakesh Nair, MBBS, MPH , Environmental & Occupational Health, FIU School of Public Health, Miami, FL
Janvier Gasana, MD PhD , Environmental & Occupational Health, FIU Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work, Miami, FL
Background: - Discrimination in the health care setting has always been an attention seeking problem. Various efforts have been put forward to understand the origin and its outcome, yet many gaps need to be addressed in the future research articles. Discrimination refers to differences in care that results from biases, prejudices, stereotyping and uncertainty in clinical communication and decision making.

Methods: - Retrieved articles on discrimination, scales of measurement used and poor health outcome (1966-2008) using MEDLINE, PsycINFO and PUBMED.

Results: - A proposed survey containing 6 items related to health care which includes question regarding general and personal views on perceived racial discrimination would be more effective in measuring racial discrimination in health care settings. Also it is found that perceived racial discrimination leads to poor health outcome.

Conclusion: - A more extended version of the existing measuring scale is needed which also includes wide range of responses thereby incorporating the personal feelings of the patients along with general views. Future research on perception of discrimination should be focused on daily basis assessment of patients visiting all health related clinics, making mandatory to fill up a modified measuring scale questionnaire on the day of discharge from hospital or exist from physician's consultation room.

Learning Areas:
Provision of health care to the public

Learning Objectives:
Explain how discrimination is measured. Identify the need for different scales of measurement. Demonstrate the best scale of measurement & its advantages over other existing scales. Assess how discrimination leads to poor health outcomes & commonly affect race/ethnicity.

Keywords: Health Care Quality, Social Inequalities

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am an Indian trained physician and will be graduating with an MPH in Environmental and Occupational Health at the end of summer 2010.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4239.3: Medical Care Section Poster Session X: Students