Patients do not care if doctors have tattoos or piercings, study says



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Although patients prefer a doctor in a traditional white coat, they do not seem to care if their doctors have tattoos or piercings.

A recently published study in the Emergency Medicine Journal involving 924 patients in a trauma center in Pennsylvania found that non-traditional tattoos or piercings did not affect patients' perception of professionalism, competence, accessibility or knowledge of physicians.

Seven emergency physicians, men and women, participated in this nine-month study. They wore various piercings or tattoos, or both – or no body art – in addition to their usual hospital scrubs.

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Patients were blinded by the true purpose of the investigation. After meetings with the doctors, the patients were invited to participate in a survey in which they had to explain how the hospital could provide courteous and competent medical care – rather than sharing what they thought of the doctors with visible tattoos and piercings. Patients were specifically asked what they thought of their physician's competence, professionalism, caring attitude, accessibility, reliability and reliability by badessing these qualities on their own. a scale of five points

traditional white coat

At least with respect to emergency room doctors, patients do not notice physicians differently when they sport tattoos and piercings, according to the study published in Emergency Medicine Journal.

could undermine perceived professionalism or patient satisfaction has not materialized, they added. As tattoos and piercings become more and more common, it is likely that those entering the medical field today are more corpulent than physicians of a previous generation

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"Despite this, the dress codes and institutional policies of most hospitals still prohibit health care professionals from having to go to work. have visible body images, "wrote the authors of the study. these studies used photographs of suppliers with and without body art and no attempt to blind patients to the purpose of the study.This study differed in that it asked the patients to do so. evaluate their doctor after a clinical encounter and the patients did not know the real purpose. 19659002] It is worth noting that a recent study found that patients made a connection between what the doctor is carrying and the patient. t for physicians in primary care facilities and hospitals.

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