Over the last two decades, the way doctors and patients interact has changed. There has been a shift away from what Talcott Parsons described as a paternaHstic model of interaction to a more collaborative, participatory, patient-centered model of interaction. Yet not all interactions between doctors and patients are collaborative. Using status characteristics theory, the authors hypothesized that medical encounters are more likely to be physician dominated luhen the status differences between doctors and patients are higher They tested hypotheses about race, gender, and socioeconomic status differences between doctors and patients. The authors found support for the hypotheses, especially regarding status differences for race and gender. Doctor-patient interactions were most physician-centered when doctors had higher status than patients on race (white versus nonwhite) and gender (male versus female).
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