Testimonial Injustice: Linguistic Bias in the Medical Records of Black Patients and Women.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Black Americans and women report feeling doubted or dismissed by health professionals.

Objective

To identify linguistic mechanisms by which physicians communicate disbelief of patients in medical records and then to explore racial and gender differences in the use of such language.

Design

Cross-sectional.

Setting/participants

All notes for patients seen in an academic ambulatory internal medicine practice in 2017.

Main measures

A content analysis of 600 clinic notes revealed three linguistic features suggesting disbelief: (1) quotes (e.g., had a "reaction" to the medication); (2) specific "judgment words" that suggest doubt (e.g., "claims" or "insists"); and (3) evidentials, a sentence construction in which patients' symptoms or experience is

SUBMITTER: Beach MC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8175470 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature