Ella Andries
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Anne Baetzel
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Department of Anesthesiology / Medicine
Program:
Authors:
Session: Session 7: 4:40 pm – 5:30 pm
Poster: 3
Abstract
Our research studies what, if any impact racial concordance among physicians and patients plays in the field of pediatric anesthesia. We are trying to understand the role of racial diversity amongst anesthesiologists and residents and whether this affects patient and family comfort and confidence in the care of their child. Racial disparity studies seek new knowledge in the sense that we are just now only seeing more diverse medical staff because of discrimination and the world’s exclusionary past which has made it incredibly harder for people of color to pursue a career in medicine. We are using existing knowledge about racial concordance, medical mistrust and improved patient outcomes in other medical specialties to assess whether similar trends exist in the field of pediatric anesthesia. Another student and I survey families in the pre-operative and family waiting rooms after they have spoken with an anesthesiologist. The survey asks respondents to rate various aspects of their child’s care on a 5-point Likert scale. We also collect self-reported data about the patient and family’s racial identity as well as their perception of how racially diverse the anesthesia team seems. We will analyze our findings to see if any relationship exists between comfort level and confidence when the patient shares the same race of their physician. We are still in the process of collecting data and have not yet started analyzing the results. I hypothesize that there will be a small correlation between patient comfort and confidence in quality of care when they share the same race as their anesthesia care team. I assume that some respondents may be reluctant to share their true feelings as the topic may be sensitive to some. Conclusions can be framed and discussed in a way where we use the number scales and race through charts, graphs etc to see if there is somewhat of a proportional relationship between the two variables. Our research hasn’t drawn any conclusion as of now, but it might be a little difficult to do so because the surveys can not be 100% accurate. Limitations of the study are the lack of racial diversity amongst anesthesiologists in the group being studied as well as response bias among those asked to fill out our survey. The social benefit of this research is crucial to the medical field, patients, and general society to better understand how race has a great effect on our comfort and care in general, and maybe understanding bias within the medical field which could lead new directions in improving medical care for all..
