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Stereotypes, prejudice, or bias based on gender expectations and other arbitrary evaluations of any individual can manifest in a variety of subtle ways. Differences in treatment that are not directly related to differences in individual patients’ clinical needs or preferences constitute inappropriate variations in health care. Such variations may contribute to health outcomes that are considerably worse in members of some populations than those of members of majority populations.

This represents a significant challenge for physicians, who ethically are called on to provide the same quality of care to all patients without regard to medically irrelevant personal characteristics. 

To fulfill this professional obligation in their individual practices physicians should: 

  1. Provide care that meets patient needs and respects patient preferences. 
  2. Avoid stereotyping patients. 
  3. Examine their own practices to ensure that inappropriate considerations about race, gender identify, sexual orientation, sociodemographic factors, or other nonclinical factors, do not affect clinical judgment. 
  4. Work to eliminate biased behavior toward patients by other health care professionals and staff who come into contact with patients. 
  5. Encourage shared decision making. 
  6. Cultivate effective communication and trust by seeking to better understand factors that can influence patients’ health care decisions, such as cultural traditions, health beliefs and health literacy, language or other barriers to communication and fears or misperceptions about the health care system. 

    The medical profession has an ethical responsibility to: 

  7. Help increase awareness of health care disparities. 
  8. Strive to increase the diversity of the physician workforce as a step toward reducing health care disparities. 
  9. Support research that examines health care disparities, including research on the unique health needs of all genders, ethnic groups, and medically disadvantaged populations, and the development of quality measures and resources to help reduce disparities.
AMA Principles of Medical Ethics: I, IV, VII, VIII, IX
Read the Principles

Council Reports