Culture, age and gender: effects on quality of predicted self and colleague reactions.
Ethnocentrism on the part of health care workers has been documented in the literature and has led to misdiagnosis, mistreatment and undertreatment of culturally diverse individuals worldwide. Aversive Insidious Racism and Ingroup Favoritism theories were used as the guiding framework for this study. Two hundred and sixty-eight female nurses from a large, urban, multi-service hospital in the United States were surveyed to identify those psychosocial variables (age, gender and culture status of the client) which enhanced and/or inhibited their predicted reactions with clients and which have the power to contribute to unethical decision making and less than ethical client care. The findings of this study, which is the first to examine nurses' predicted self and colleague reactions to multiple client variables concurrently, demonstrated that Client Gender as a main effect was not significant in itself when examining self and colleague predictions. Client Age as a main effect was significant for self predictions, p < 0.006, and for colleague predictions, p < 0.000. Client Culture as a main effect was significant for self predictions, p < 0.001 and for colleague predictions, p < 0.001. Many two-way and three-way interaction effects were significant. Subjects consistently predicted more favorable self reactions than colleague reactions, supporting Aversive Insidious Racism theory. Study findings did not consistently support Ingroup Favoritism theory. Subjects did not predict most favorable reactions with Caucasian female clients.
Greipp
M E
ME
Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, Camden College of Arts and Sciences 08102, USA.
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D003469:Culture; D003657:Decision Making; D004993:Ethics, Nursing; D005006:Ethnicity; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016294:Models, Nursing; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000523:psychology*; D011287:Prejudice; D012649:Self Concept; D012737:Sex Factors; D012938:Social Perception; D014481:United States