Impact of Gender on Doctor-Patient Communication and Emotion: Exploratory Analysis

Avishek Choudhury, Safa Elkefi, Onur Asan

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    1 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Doctor-patient communication is one of the essential precursors of patient-centered care. The quality of this communication is influenced by several factors, including providers' communication style and the use of existing technologies. In our previous studies, we measured the impact of health information technology on doctor-patient communication. In this study, we used sentiment analysis to understand the impact of doctor-patient gender dyads on verbal communication. The findings showed a noticeable difference in the communication pattern between the same (concordance) and opposite gender dyads (discordance). The findings of this study also indicate that male doctors tend to talk more and in detail with their patients (p= 0.01 for gender concordance; p=0.01 during gender discordance) than female doctors did with their patients (p=0.33 for gender concordance; p=0.41 during gender discordance), irrespective of doctor-patient gender dyads. No significant differences were observed in doctor-patient sentiments and emotions. However, we observed more trust in gender concordance (20.9% 17.6% of the time). In contrast, gender discordance resulted in more sadness (15.5% 19.8% of the time), anticipation (17.3%), and joy (16.1% of the time). In conclusion, our study indicates that gender influences doctor-patient verbal communication. Further research with larger sample size is required to thoroughly understand the role of gender in overall healthcare communication.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationISSE 2020 - 6th IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering, Proceedings
    Pages36DUMMY0
    ISBN (Electronic)9781728186023
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 12 Oct 2020
    Event6th IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering, ISSE 2020 - Virtual, Vienna, Austria
    Duration: 12 Oct 202012 Nov 2020

    Publication series

    NameISSE 2020 - 6th IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering, Proceedings

    Conference

    Conference6th IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering, ISSE 2020
    Country/TerritoryAustria
    CityVirtual, Vienna
    Period12/10/2012/11/20

    Keywords

    • Gender dyads
    • affective events theory
    • communication accommodation theory
    • doctor-patient communication
    • electronic health record
    • emotions
    • gender concordance
    • gender discordance
    • natural language processing
    • sentiment analysis
    • text mining

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