The effect of a racially consonant medical context on adjustment of African-American patients to physical disability.
The effect of a racially consonant medical context on reaction to physical handicap stemming from disease is explored in a sample of 90 African-American patients with vitiligo, a disfiguring skin disorder. The adjustment of sixty-nine patients in a predominantly black hospital setting is compared to that of twenty-one patients in a predominantly white hospital setting. The patients in the predominantly black clinic, where the physicians, staff, and clientele are African-American, show significantly better adjustment than do African-American patients in a medical context that is primarily white. Interviews with a random sample of one-third of the patients in each clinic show that patients are significantly more positive to black physicians and a black hospital setting and that other patients of the same race provide informal networks of support, as does the predominantly African-American community in which the hospital is located. Implications for both medical theory and practice are suggested on the basis of these findings.
Porter
J R
JR
Department of Sociology, Bryn Mawr College, PA 19010.
Beuf
A H
AH
D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000523:psychology*; D000368:Aged; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D015285:Hospital-Patient Relations; D006801:Humans; D007406:Interview, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011287:Prejudice; D011897:Random Allocation; D012494:Sampling Studies; D012917:Social Adjustment; D012944:Social Support; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014820:Vitiligo / Q000523:psychology