Patient-health care professional gender or race/ethnicity concordance and its association with weight-related advice in the United States

Abstract

Objective Examine association between adult patients' and health care providers' (HCPs) gender or race/ethnicity concordance and patients' reported receiving weight-related advice from HCP's in USA. Methods Using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) 2004-2007 data, studied prevalence of weight-related advice (on exercise and diet) given to patients and its association with patients/HCPs concordance in gender (n=9,686) and race/ethnicity (n=8,825). Results Overall, 46% of patients received HCP advice on diet and 49% on exercise. Overweight females seeing female HCPs were more likely to receive exercise advice than those seeing male HCPs (OR=1.44 [95% CI: 1.10-1.89]). Race/ethnicity concordance was associated with lower odds of advice-receiving in certain populations (OR=0.80 [0.67-0.97] for exercise and OR=0.42 [0.19-0.91] for diet among white patients, OR=0.47 [0.23-0.98] for exercise among Hispanic overweight patients). Conclusions Patient/HCP gender or race/ethnicity concordance was not positively associated with HCPs providing weight-related advice. Patients with female HCPs or with racial/ethnic discordant HCPs (especially black or Asian HCPs) were more likely to receive advice. Practice Implications Health care providers need be empowered, particularly white and male HCPs, to improve delivery of weight-related advice. It may reflect better of receiving weight-related advice based on patients' recall.

Delivering brief physical activity interventions in primary care: a systematic review

“…(n = 32) were conducted (in whole or part) in North American populations (Supplementary Table S1). 16,22,[24][25][26][27]31,33,35,38,39,[42][43][44][45][46]48,50,52,53,56,57,62,63,66,68,[71][72][73][74]77,78…”

“…22 Patient-reported receipt of PA BI Twenty-five studies (reported in 26 articles) provided data on patient receipt of PA BI (Figure 2; Supplementary Table S4). 16,24,27,[31][32][33]38,40,41,43,44,47,48,[51][52][53][54][55]60,61,63,64,67,68,74,76 The proportion of patients reporting that they had received PA advice ranged from 7.7% (of females, 9.4% of males) to 76% (median 35%), 40,63 with 13 studies reporting that <40% of patients recalled receiving PA advi ce. 16,31,38,40,41,47,48,51,53,54,60,64,67 Reviewing audiotaped discussions highlighted that 21% of patients could not accurately recall PA discussions that occurred.…”

The colours and contours of compassion: A systematic review of the perspectives of compassion among ethnically diverse patients and healthcare providers

“…Patients’ ethnic background also seem to impact HCPs expression of compassionate care, with HCPs potentially expressing less affective compassion towards Korean patients, for example, due to a belief that patients from this ethnic group are less receptive to expressive feelings [ 49 ]. On the other hand, many Korean study patients preferred to be seen by a HCP from a different ethnic background because of fear of judgment from their fellow Korean HCP [ 54 ], thereby suggesting that patient-healthcare provider ethnicity concordance is not necessarily associated with enhanced compassionate care affirming the results of other studies [ 71 ]. Collectively, these results suggests that ethnic and cultural differences not only affect patients’ experiences of receiving compassion, but could also result in variance in HCPs’ provision of compassion—modifying their compassion based on the beliefs and assumptions they hold related to the ethnic background of the patient in their care.…”

Communication between patients and primary care physicians after behavioural weight loss: an observational study

“…This study focussed on patients’ perceptions of communication to inform future patient-centred care, however, future studies may wish to collect data from PCPs to address this limitation. Other factors not measured in this study may explain aspects of weight-related interactions in primary care, such as physician perception of the interaction, PCP weight stigma, low PCP weight control knowledge, brief appointments, or PCP demographics (Yang et al ., 2016 ; Tsai et al ., 2018a ). Additionally, this study focussed on patients enrolled in a research trial which may limit generalizability.…”