IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v16y1982i20p1781-1789.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Patient characteristics negatively stereotyped by doctors

Author

Listed:
  • Najman, J. M.
  • Klein, D.
  • Munro, C.

Abstract

A variety of studies demonstrate the existence of prejudice in the manner and content of health care delivery. Alcoholics, attempted suicides, drug addicts, prostitutes, the mentally retarded or mentally ill, the aged and women have been found to receive less adequate health care. Previous studies have identified manifestations of prejudice in health care delivery but have generally failed to determine the prevalence of negative stereotypes in a sample comprising a cross section of medical practitioners. This study reviews the negative patient stereotypes reported by 2421 Victorian (Australia) and Michigan (U.S.A.) doctors. The characteristics of patients so stereotyped are found to be remarkably consistent. The most commonly held negative stereotypes (patients who abuse alcohol, unhygienic patients, abusive patients, substance abusers and those with minor mental disorders) appear to be determined by the social values which prevail in our society. Many negative stereotypes appear to reflect a response to patients who deviate from the sick role. Other stereotypes may involve reactions to patients or to the types of problems which raise important therapeutic dilemmas.

Suggested Citation

  • Najman, J. M. & Klein, D. & Munro, C., 1982. "Patient characteristics negatively stereotyped by doctors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 16(20), pages 1781-1789, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:16:y:1982:i:20:p:1781-1789
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(82)90272-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Malat, Jennifer R. & van Ryn, Michelle & Purcell, David, 2006. "Race, socioeconomic status, and the perceived importance of positive self-presentation in health care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(10), pages 2479-2488, May.
    2. Denvir, Paul M., 2012. "When patients portray their conduct as normal and healthy: An interactional challenge for thorough substance use history taking," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(9), pages 1650-1659.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:16:y:1982:i:20:p:1781-1789. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.