Journal of general internal medicine
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Randomized Controlled Trial
A social psychological approach to improving the outcomes of racially discordant medical interactions.
Medical interactions between Black patients and non-Black physicians are less positive and productive than racially concordant ones and contribute to racial disparities in the quality of health care. ⋯ An intervention used to reduce intergroup bias successfully produced greater Black patient trust of non-Black physicians and adherence. These findings offer promising evidence for a relatively low-cost and simple intervention that may offer a means to improve medical outcomes of racially discordant medical interactions. However, the sample size of physicians and patients was small, and thus the effectiveness of the intervention should be further tested in different settings, with different populations of physicians and other health outcomes.