Minority mistrust still haunts medical care

Physicians are urged to work harder to earn trust from minority patients.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Jan. 13, 2003.

To help him understand the mistrust minority patients have developed in doctors, Bruce Block, MD, imagined himself in post-World War II Germany.

Dr. Block, who is Jewish, pretended he was a Nazi concentration camp survivor who sought medical care. To his horror, the doctor was the physician from the death camp where he had been imprisoned.

"That's the feeling I'm getting from well-educated minority patients and their stories. There are times when they are in the exam room when they feel like they're being treated by the enemy," said Dr. Block, a family physician at Shadyside Family Health Center in Pittsburgh, who is among doctors and educators working to wipe out that mistrust. He has conducted focus groups in the black community to hear patient concerns and teamed with churches to build health ministries -- two efforts that foster trust of the medical community.

Understanding his patients' cultural and racial backgrounds and being sensitive to them has enabled Dr. Block to build better relationships with his minority patients -- a key to providing the best possible care.

Minority health care has been under the spotlight since a March 2002 Institute of Medicine report found that racial and ethnic minorities received lower quality health care than whites. For example, minorities were less likely to undergo bypass surgery and to receive kidney dialysis or organ transplants than whites.

Some experts believe the best long-term solution to the disparities problem is to train more minority physicians. But the percentage of the population that is made up of minorities is growing at a much faster rate than the percentage of minorities in the physician work force. And medical school statistics indicate that isn't likely to change soon.