Sexual Orientation and Racial Bias in Relation to Medical Specialty

ABSTRACT

Physician explicit and implicit biases involving race and sexual orientation (SO) affect patient and provider experiences in healthcare settings. An anonymous survey was disseminated nationally to graduating medical students, residents, and practicing physicians to evaluate SO and racial biases across medical specialties. SO explicit and implicit bias were measured with the Attitudes toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale, short form (ATLG-S) and Gay-Straight Implicit Association Test (IAT). Racial explicit and implicit bias were measured with the Quick Discrimination Index (QDI) and the Black-White IAT. Medical specialty was associated with racial explicit bias and specialty prestige with Black-White IAT score. Medical specialty and specialty prestige were not associated with SO bias. Female sex, sexual and gender minority (SGM) identity, and decreased religiosity were associated with reduced SO and racial bias. Provider race was associated with racial implicit and explicit bias.

KEYWORDS:

• Implicit bias
• explicit bias
• physician bias
• medical specialty
• sexual orientation
• race/ethnicity

Disclosure statement

M.H.B. receives research support from Therapix Biosciences, Neurocrine Biosciences, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, but received no support from these sources for the current manuscript. M.H.B. gratefully acknowledges additional research support from NIH. Dr. Zelin, Mx. Scott, Dr. Avila-Quintero, Ms. Curlin, and Dr. Flores report no financial relationship with commercial interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2132441

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for this project was provided by the Yale Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies (FLAGS).