April 7-9, 2022 • Hyatt Regency • Lexington, KY
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Communication Strategies to Promote Comprehensive Well-being
Abstract: “What are your preferred pronouns?”: Creating a More Inclusive Healthscape
Introduction Health disparities have been widely documented for members of the LGBTQ community throughout their lifecycle. These disparities encompass both physical and mental health issues and continue to persist across the entire continuum of health care, from access to care, through quality of care provided, to long-term outcomes. While many changes are required to fully ameliorate these disparities, even small improvements in patient-provider communication can lead to more inclusive healthcare and to improved outcomes. The current studies investigate two methods of making patient-provider interactions more inclusive, with an aim to maximize inclusiveness for members of the LGBTQ community while minimizing backlash from other patients, as this is key to determining interventions that healthcare providers could realistically implement in broader clinical settings. Study 1 Two hundred and forty-seven participants completed the study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants read a scenario in which they went to their doctor for elbow pain. Participants were randomized to one of two conditions: one in which the doctor announced his pronouns and asked the patients their pronouns when introducing himself, and one in which he did not. Participants in the pronouns-asked condition were provided a text box to provide their chosen pronouns. After reading the doctor’s advice, participants were asked about their satisfaction and willingness to return to the same doctor in the future. They were also asked demographic questions and their political orientation. Mediation analysis using PROCESS (Hayes 2018) indicated significant moderation of pronoun-ask condition on willingness to return by political orientation, p=.002, with the pronoun-ask condition having a positive effect on willingness to return for more liberal participants and a negative effect for participants who identified themselves as more conservative. Study 2 Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1 and also tested an alternative method by which a provider might indicate an accepting and inclusive attitude – wearing a pin indicating preferred pronouns. We hypothesized that this less aggressive indication of inclusiveness may be effective while reducing backlash among politically conservative patients. Five-hundred and three participants completed the study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants read a scenario similar to Study 1 and were randomized to condition in a 2 (verbally ask pronouns or not) x 2 (pronoun pin worn or not) design. A linear regression with independent variables separately interacting pin wearing and political orientation and verbally asking pronouns and political orientation found that, as in Study 1 the interaction between verbal pronoun ask and political orientation significantly predicted willingness to return to that provider, = -.114, t(487)=2.67, p=.008, with participants who indicating being more conservative indicating less willingness to return. There was not, however, a significant impact of pronoun pin wearing, p=.71 These results suggest that more direct methods of increasing inclusivity in healthcare settings may meet with resistance due to backlash effects among more conservative patients. There may, however, be more subtle methods of increasing inclusivity such as physician pin-wearing that achieve these aims while meeting with less backlash among certain patient groups.