- 2 OF 7 - Healthcare Stigma

Continuing my discovery process for #MissionStigmaFree and connecting to areas related to health literacy for the month of October, I was SHOCKED to find 10 main categories of health practitioner stigma (2 of 7 stigma categories). I was even more shocked to find that examples for each category easily brought forward examples of negative attitudes, beliefs, or biases that can be held against people whether they are being cared for by a healthcare professional or are a healthcare practitioner.

Health practitioner stigma occurs when negative attitudes, beliefs, and biases lead to actions being taken towards healthcare professionals or by healthcare professionals that undermines patient-provider relationships, and results in negative outcomes such as delayed diagnosis, inadequate treatment, and worsened health. While exploring the various types of health practitioner stigma, I found 10 main categories: mental health, substance use, obesity, HIV/AIDS, LBGTQ+, racial & ethnic, age-related, sexual health, disability, and poverty & social. All of these categories of healthcare practitioner stigma present barriers and challenges to the US achieving its goals for health literacy.

In this article, I provide a balanced summary of healthcare practitioner stigma towards patients AND towards healthcare workers. I offer a few examples for each group illustrating negative attitudes, beliefs, or biases that can be held against people whether they were being cared for by a healthcare professional or are a healthcare professional.  

Stigma Towards Patients:

1. Mental Health Patients: Healthcare providers may assume that patients with mental health issues are seeking attention. For instance, a nurse not just thinking or saying the patient is an attention seeker, but taking actions to ignore the patient's complaints of anxiety leading to delayed diagnosis and potentially worsened mental health.

2. Weight Bias: Healthcare providers might assume or judge lifestyle choices leading to a failure to provide appropriate care for weight-related health issues.

3. Substance Abuse: Patients with substance abuse disorders can experience inadequate pain management or reluctance to treat when faced with healthcare professionals that lack understanding of the complex factors contributing to addiction.

Stigma Towards Healthcare Professionals:

1. Mental Health Stigma Among Healthcare Workers: Healthcare professionals, like anyone else, may experience mental health issues. However, there can be a stigma within the healthcare community about seeking help for mental health concerns deterring individuals from seeking the support they need.

2. Nursing Professionals: Some physicians may hold prejudices against seemingly subservient nurses and marking them with shame or disgrace. Doing so, creates barriers to effective healthcare collaboration and teamwork advancing health improvement for patients.

3. Gender-Based Stigma: Female doctors or nurses may not be taken as seriously as their male counterparts, leading to disparities in career advancement.

Three discoveries I gleaned from researching health practitioner stigma are:

1. HHS provides programs and services to enhance health literacy.

2. This category of stigma occurs more often than I realized – as noted by how easy it was for me to recall personal stories for examples.

3. The best practice for healthcare organizations is to implement training and awareness programs to reduce negative outcomes and support a more inclusive environment for both patients and healthcare professionals.