Screening Rates Lowered By Perceived Dsicrimination from Health Care Providers

We frequently attribute too-low screening rates to the fact that people need to be education about the importance of getting medical imaging scans such as scans for colon cancer. However, the problem may not always be that people aren't aware of the importance of getting such scans. In fact, people who do believe that these scans are important may still choose not to get the screening due to the fact that the perceive some sort of discrimination from the medical care provider that they are working with. A new study indicates that people of minority backgrounds may believe that they are being discriminated against by the health care industry because of their race or ethnicity. These people may opt to avoid important medical screening because they want to avoid dealing with the doctors that they perceive as being discriminatory against them. It should be noted that the study doesn't actually say that doctors are discriminating against minority patients. Instead, it says that patients are perceiving some level of discrimination. This means that there may be something that medical care providers are doing that hints at discrimination even though they do not intend the behavior this way. This suggests that it is important to study what is happening in this field of medicine that is causing patients to perceive discrimination. Lowering the rate of perceived discrimination could raise rates of screening and improve mortality rates overall. Question of the Day: How does perceived discrimination in the medical industry impact important medical screening rates (such as screening rates for colon cancer)? photo link

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