title: Physician and patient perceptions of cultural competency and medical compliance.
abstract: To examine the relationship between the different perceptions of medical teams and their patients of the cultural competence of physicians, and the influence of this relationship on the conflict between them. Physicians' cultural competence (Noble A. Linguistic and cultural mediation of social services. Cultural competence of health care. Echo New Studio 2007; 91:18-28) might reduce this phenomenon. Structured questionnaires were distributed to 90 physicians working in outpatient clinics in a central hospital in Israel, and to 417 of their patients. Each physician had four to six sampled patients.The findings showed a significant negative correlation (r = -0.50, P < 0.05) between the physicians' perception of their cultural competence and the patients' perception of physician competence. The more patients perceive the physician as culturally competent, the more they comply with their medical recommendations. In addition, the findings show that ethnicity significantly affects patients' perception of the cultural competence of physicians, and their satisfaction with the medical care they receive.
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Studies, Program on Conflict, Management and Negotiation, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan 5290002, Israel and ohanashula@gmail.com.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ohana
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mash
mesh_terms: D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities; D054521:Cultural Competency / Q000523:psychology*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000523:psychology*; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D010465:Perception; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014850:Waiting Lists