Existing stereotypes within the healthcare system and broader society can negatively impact the quality of provided medical services. The former includes prejudices towards the person based on his/her profession, educational level, marital status, race, weight, and age, as well as towards patients with certain diseases. Such biases not only affect treatment outcomes but also influence primary decisions to seek medical help. Furthermore, prejudices can exist in various directions and among various stakeholders. For instance, medical professionals may have stereotypes about their patients but at the same time be subjects of incorrect preconceptions from the latter. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the consequences of the problem from various perspectives considering all the groups that can produce prejudiced views and be the victims of misconceptions.
First of all, society holds inadequate views about people with certain diseases. The latter includes but is not limited to mental problems, weight issues, inflammatory bowel disease, and sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV or syphilis (Chrisler, Barney & Palatino, 2016; Taft & Keefer, 2016). From the healthcare perspective, such attitudes can discourage affected individuals from seeking help on time. For instance, only less than half of people with diagnosed mental issues look for professional assistance (Sickel, Seacat & Nabors, 2019). Similarly, Rueda et al. (2016) found that individuals that encounter HIV-related stigma are less likely to attend medical institutions and seek healthcare services.
Additionally, medical workers also can be the holders of stigma against the groups mentioned above. This, on the one hand, may further discourage patients from starting or continuing their treatment and, on the other hand, affect the quality of provided services. For instance, Stringer et al. (2016) claim that in some southern U.S. states, a prevalent number of doctors believed that they should have the right to refuse assistance to people sick with HIV. The latter can be explained by healthcare providers’ fear of getting infected (Ornek et al., 2020).
Moreover, it is found that stereotypes related to social status and ethnic background can also influence the level of services provided by medical workers. This may lead to wrong diagnoses and choice of treatment methods due to existing preconceptions about the patient’s condition. However, on the other hand, the knowledge about an individual’s status and race may indeed help the doctor with necessary additional information. Therefore, to be able to draw the line between complementary secondary data and prejudiced conclusions, medical workers should be attentive to every case. According to Puddifoot (2019), healthcare professionals should “…provide the patient with the opportunity to communicate information about their condition,…attend to non-stereotypical symptoms, …give attention to non-stereotypical medical hypotheses” (p. 82).
At the same time, medical workers can also be subjects of stereotypical views. Firstly, students and workers may face prejudice in the choice of career path. For instance, Cleary et al. (2018) assert that nursing is considered a predominantly feminine occupation; thus, males who choose this career path may be constantly questioned about their decisions. The authors claim that such pressure from society may discourage the latter from pursuing a medical assistant career which causes gender inequality. Secondly, Kämmer & Ewers (2021) suggest that stereotypes exist between professionals in different medical spheres. For example, the researchers found that some doctors may ignore and lessen the contribution of the nurses (Kämmer & Ewers, 2021). In a similar vein, Graham et al. (2020) maintain that the role of psychiatric nurses in medical institutions is mostly undervalued. However, the evidence shows that the existence of inter-professional biases may negatively affect the collaboration work between healthcare professionals and ultimately damage the overall services provided to patients (Sari et al., 2018).
References
Chrisler, J. C., Barney, A., & Palatino, B. (2016). Ageism can be hazardous to women’s health: Ageism, sexism, and stereotypes of older women in the healthcare system. Journal of Social Issues, 72(1), 86-104.
Cleary, M., Dean, S., Sayers, J. M., & Jackson, D. (2018). Nursing and stereotypes. Issues in mental health nursing, 39(2), 192-194.
Graham, J. M., Waddell, C., Pachkowski, K., & Friesen, H. (2020). Educating the educators: determining the uniqueness of psychiatric nursing practice to inform psychiatric nurse education. Issues in mental health nursing, 41(5), 395-403.
Kämmer, J. E., & Ewers, M. (2021). Stereotypes of experienced health professionals in an interprofessional context: results from a cross-sectional survey in Germany. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 1-12.
Koseoglu Ornek, O., Tabak, F., & Mete, B. (2020). Stigma in Hospital: an examination of beliefs and attitudes towards HIV/AIDS patients, Istanbul. AIDS care, 32(8), 1045-1051.
Puddifoot, K. (2019). Stereotyping patients. Journal of social philosophy, 50(1), 69 – 90.
Rueda, S., Mitra, S., Chen, S., Gogolishvili, D., Globerman, J., Chambers, L., Wilson, M., Logie, C, H., Shi, Q., Morassaei, S., & Rourke, S. B. (2016). Examining the associations between HIV-related stigma and health outcomes in people living with HIV/AIDS: a series of meta-analyses. BMJ open, 6(7), 1-15.
Sari, V. R., Hariyati, R. T. S., & Hamid, A. Y. S. (2018). The association between stereotyping and interprofessional collaborative practice. Enfermeria clinica, 28, 134-138.
Sickel, A. E., Seacat, J. D., & Nabors, N. A. (2019). Mental health stigma: Impact on mental health treatment attitudes and physical health. Journal of health psychology, 24(5), 586-599.
Stringer, K. L., Turan, B., McCormick, L., Durojaiye, M., Nyblade, L., Kempf, M. C., Bronwen, L., & Turan, J. M. (2016). HIV-related stigma among healthcare providers in the deep south. AIDS and Behavior, 20(1), 115-125.
Taft, T. H., & Keefer, L. (2016). A systematic review of disease-related stigmatization in patients living with inflammatory bowel disease. Clinical and experimental gastroenterology, 9, 49 – 58.