The greatest problem creating physician bias is lumping people into categories. You may assume a homeless patient has addiction problems or that a male patient will be more resistant to changes. We’re trained to recognize demographics which means we have to go against the grain when treating individuals. I have a patient I regularly see is a poorly controlled diabetic. She also has problems with obesity and high blood pressure. When I changed some of her medications and advised her to change her diet and monitor her blood sugar I did not think she would be adherent. I assumed a patient with advanced disease had already ignored some other doctor and would ignore me as well. I was greatly surprised. On a return visit the patient brought and exhaustive list of her blood sugars morning noon and night time and a list of foods she had taken at each meal! After talking to her more she told me she had recently gotten better insurance and hadn’t been to the doctor in a while. What a mistake I made to just write this person off. Getting to know individuals helps you resist those jaded thoughts and makes you more compassionate.
I assumed a person would be nonadherent due to my bias towards poorly controlled disease.
In the future it would be prudent to understand a patients understanding and impression of their disease and what things have helped and hurt them in controlling it. It’s also great to know unique traits about each patient.
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