The Effect of a Clinician Communication Coaching Intervention on Racial Disparities in the Quality of Communication in Clinical Encounters
Racial disparities in the quality of communication are widely documented.
Physicians are more verbally dominant, less supportive, less empathic, provide less information, express less positive affect, and use less patient-centered communication with Black compared with White patients.
This is important because effective communication leads to improvements in trust, satisfaction with care, continuity, adherence to treatment, and other clinical outcomes.
Therefore, interventions which improve communication for Black patients may reduce racial disparities in health outcomes by improving the quality of patient-centered care.
The goal of this project is to determine the extent to which a coaching intervention in outpatient clinics improves patient-centered care and reduces racial disparities in communication.
The goals of this study are to:
- Determine the effect of a clinician communication coaching intervention versus control (non-intervention group) on an objective measure of the quality of communication and patients’ perceptions of the quality of patient-centered care for both Black and White patients;
- Determine the effect of a clinician communication coaching intervention versus control (non-intervention group) on racial disparities in objective measures of communication quality and in the quality of patient-centered care.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of a provider communication intervention on disparities in patient-centered care.