Clinical research studyWhat to wear today? Effect of doctor’s attire on the trust and confidence of patients
Section snippets
Methods
Subjects were administered a survey to assess the self-expressed degree of patient trust, confidence in physicians, and adherence to prescribed regimens. The study used a randomized cross-sectional design, which made use of survey methodology. Before the administration of the surveys to the study subjects, the survey’s reliability and validity were tested. Two researchers familiar with instrument development and clinical research assessed the questionnaire’s content validity. After a slight
Results
Characteristics of study participants are listed in Table 1. Of the 400 respondents, 54% were white and 38% were African-American. Table 2 demonstrates that, in response to each of the preference questions about physician attire, there is a clear choice among respondents for professional attire. The chi-squared tests indicated that the preference patterns were all highly significantly different from an equal preference among the 4 various styles of dress. On average, across all preference
Discussion
In our study, respondents overwhelmingly favor professional attire with white coats for physicians. Our study results are similar to many other studies conducted worldwide in a variety of settings, except that none of the studies were conducted in the internal medicine outpatient setting.28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 Our study indicated that professional attire was associated with greater patient self-reported trust and confidence. This is similar to findings reported by McNaughton-Filion and
Conclusion
Patients and visitors to an internal medicine clinic in this study were overwhelmingly in favor of doctors wearing professional dress, ie, more formal attire with a white coat. We recommend that general internists consider wearing more formal attire with a white coat during patient care encounters, because it may favorably influence trust and confidence-building in the medical encounter. This is particularly important if this attire results in better adherence and thus positive health outcomes.
Acknowledgment
We thank Scott Stewart, MD; Sarah Melissa Mahoney, MD; Jerome Simmons, and Erica Hanesworth, Pharm D for modeling for photographs. We thank Mary Nashed, MB, and M. Hadi Ali Baig, MBBS, for assistance with logistics of the study. We are also thankful to John C. Baroody of Medical Media of Ralph H. Johnson V.A. Medical Center for his help in photographing our models.
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This work was supported in part by Department of Veterans Affairs Research Services.