Evaluation of owners’ attitudes towards veterinarian attire in the small animal specialty setting in North America

Abstract

Previous studies in human medicine have found that patients prefer their doctors to be more formally attired, and that this influences their trust and confidence in their physician. The purpose of this study was to evaluate how veterinarians’ attire affected owners’ impressions and trust in the small animal specialty medicine setting. A questionnaire based study conducted during a 2‐month period at an urban based small animal private practice specialty hospital. Respondents completed a written survey after reviewing pictures of the same male and female veterinarian in five different dress styles. Respondents were asked for their preference for male and female veterinarian attire in different clinical scenarios and whether it would affect their willingness to discuss sensitive issues. Two hundred and thirty‐eight questionnaires were completed during the study period with 76.1% of respondents being female. Female respondents did not have a preference to how a male or female veterinarian was attired with the attire examples provided. However, male respondents tended to have fairly equal response rates between no preference and preferring a male veterinarian to be in either clinical or professional attire. Male owners either had no preference or preferred their male veterinarian to be attired in clinical or professional attire and had no preference or preferred their female veterinarian to be clinical attire. Most respondents do not feel it is necessary for a veterinarian to wear a white coat or neck ties and most do not feel it is inappropriate for a veterinarian to wear blue jeans, have coloured hair, or have visible tattoos.

Effect of attire on client perceptions of veterinarians

“…Our results differ from those of Sugerman-McGiffm et al (Sugerman-McGiffm et al, 2018) and Robb et al ((Robb et al, 2019) in which clients stated no preference for attire, and from the Coe et al (2020) study in which surgical scrubs were preferred. Possible reasons for these different results include the geographic location and the type of practice.…”

“…Possible reasons for these different results include the geographic location and the type of practice. Our practice is in a midsized Midwestern town (Madison, WI), as opposed to a rural location in the Sugerman- McGiffin et al (Sugerman-McGiffin et al, 2018) study or a suburban setting (Irvine, CA) as in the Robb et al ((Robb et al, 2019) study. Our practice is also a primarily referral practice in an academic setting, rather than a private specialty practice or private emergency clinic.…”

“…The Coe et al (2020) study surveyed a very different population, recruiting from dog parks and via social media, which may have contributed to their differing results. The setting and type of care provided have been shown to affect attire preferences in the physician setting, with patients receiving acute care or surgery demonstrating less preference for white lab coats (Petrilli et al, 2015) Robb et al, 2019) studies were both more complex surveys that asked clients to rank various outfits related to questions about procedures and client-doctor relationship attributes. These different methodologies may have influenced client responses.…”

“…Asking people how they will respond in a hypothetical situation, as these studies did, can result in less valid answers as people are typically not good at predicting their behavior or feelings in the future (Fowler and Cosenza, 2008). This is demonstrated in the Robb et al (2019) study, in which 70% of respondents stated they did not have a preference for a white lab coat, yet the outfits most commonly selected were those in which models wore white lab coats. Lastly, our study had 505 respondents, compared to 154 and 238 in the Sugarman-McGiffin et al (Sugerman-McGiffm et al, 2018) and Robb et al (2019) studies, respectively, which may also explain our differing results.…”

“…Interestingly, while most clients indicated no preference regarding attire, 25% of surveyed clients agreed that their opinion of the care given was influenced by what their veterinarian wears. In a second study, 238 clients visiting a small animal specialty clinic were asked to choose which of five outfits they would prefer their doctor to be wearing in a variety of situations, and also asked about trust, confidence, competency, and responsibility (Robb et al, 2019). In this study, male respondents were evenly divided between no preference, clinical (white lab coat over scrubs) and professional (white lab coat over slacks/blouse/shirt with necktie) attire while female respondents did not demonstrate a particular preference.…”