The Effect of Values Affirmation on Race-Discordant Patient-Provider Communication
Minority Diabetes Reports Thursday, November 29th, 2012Jamanetwork: Nov 26, 2012
Communication between African American patients and white health care providers has been shown to be of poorer quality when compared with race-concordant patient-provider communication. Fear on the part of patients that providers stereotype them negatively might be one cause of this poorer communication. This stereotype threat may be lessened by a values-affirmation intervention.
Methods In a blinded experiment, we randomized 99 African American patients with hypertension to perform a values-affirmation exercise or a control exercise before a visit with their primary care provider. We compared patient-provider communication for the 2 groups using audio recordings of the visit analyzed with the Roter Interaction Analysis System. We also evaluated visit satisfaction, trust, stress, and mood after the visit by means of a questionnaire. Read More