Racial disparity in pain management likely stems from mistaken beliefs

(credit: National Cancer Institute)

Personal biases held by physicians and others in the field of healthcare continue to affect patients of all kinds. These can be biases about specific diseases or treatments, or biases about the patients themselves.

Pain management is one area in which racial disparities have been widely documented but haven’t been fully understood. A new study published in PNAS indicates that incorrect beliefs about racial differences cause white doctors and medical students to make less-appropriate pain-treatment recommendations. In short, black patients may be getting short-changed on pain management if their doctors think that black bodies are inherently stronger than white bodies.

To study the phenomenon of racial bias in pain treatment, the researchers conducted two studies. They first examined the beliefs of whites who were not medical professionals to establish baseline prejudices about pain perception for people of different backgrounds. They found that white adults with no medical training endorse at least some false beliefs about biological differences with black people, including the incorrect belief that blood coagulates at different speeds for people of different races.

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