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• Posted August 7, 2024

Feel Judged by Your Doctor? You Might Not Be Imagining It

It’s tough to open up to a doctor, even though it’s vital if patients want the best care for what ails them.

Why the reticence? People worry they’ll be judged by their doctor if they share mistaken beliefs or false ideas.

Now, a new study finds that’s not an unfounded worry.

Doctors really do take strongly negative views of patients who share conspiracy theories or unreasonable beliefs, researchers found.

“People worry about their doctors looking down on them -- and it turns out that’s an entirely rational concern,” said lead researcher Samantha Kleinberg, an associate professor with the Stevens Institute of Technology. in Hoboken, N.J. “Our study suggests that doctors really do judge patients harshly if they share information or beliefs that they disagree with.” 

For the study, published Aug. 2 in the journal Medical Decision Making, the research team surveyed more than 350 patients and 200 physicians, asking how they would view people who had a range of different medical beliefs.

Some of the beliefs were unreasonable, like, “Drinking carrot juice will cure diabetes.” Others bordered on conspiracy theory, like, “Medications intentionally cause diabetes as a side effect to create more customers for insulin.” 

Results showed that the more unreasonable a person’s health beliefs, the more negatively they were viewed by both other people as well as health care professionals.

“We found that our subjects viewed people negatively if they held mistaken beliefs -- but viewed them much more negatively if they held more unreasonable or conspiratorial beliefs,” Kleinberg said in an institute news release.

“The degree to which healthcare professionals held negative perceptions towards patients espousing misinformation surprised us, and suggests doctors may need additional support and resources to effectively treat such patients,” said researcher Onur Asan, an associate professor with the Stevens Institute.

Interestingly, doctors even viewed people negatively when they expressed mistaken beliefs about technical health-related topics, researchers found.

“That was a surprising result, and frankly a depressing one,” Kleinberg said. “Laypeople aren’t expected to have medical expertise, so doctors often have to correct mistaken beliefs on health issues. That shouldn’t be something that leads doctors to view patients more negatively.”

Most people hold at least some incorrect health-related beliefs, researchers noted -- like taking vitamin C will cure a cold or eating a sugary snack can cause diabetes.

That makes it vital that patients feel free to ask their doctor for their expert opinion, Kleinberg said.

“We rely on our doctors to educate us and help us overcome these medical misconceptions -- but that’s only possible if we’re able to express our ideas freely, without fear of being judged when we get things wrong,” Kleinberg said.

Patients also had little time for nonsense, even those with lots of personal experience related to health care, the study found.

Even patients living with chronic health problems were highly intolerant of people with mistaken beliefs, researchers found.

“We’d thought people who had diabetes themselves might be more sympathetic, but it wasn’t the case at all,” Kleinberg said.

These results show that doctors need to do more to make patients feel safe and comfortable, researchers concluded.

“If we want to have clear communication between patients and healthcare professionals, we need to change the way that doctors think about patients who are misinformed,” Kleinberg said. “Doctors need to overcome their tendency to judge patients, and actively encourage patients to share their thoughts -- even their incorrect ones -- much more freely than they currently do.”

More information

The American Medical Association has more on the doctor-patient relationship.

SOURCE: Stevens Institute of Technology, news release, Aug. 2, 2024