Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon.
Department of Psychology, Federal University of Paraíba.
Cultur Divers Ethnic Minor Psychol. 2018 Apr;24(2):294-301. doi: 10.1037/cdp0000187. Epub 2018 Mar 5.
Immigrants tend to receive a lower quality of healthcare, which can be a sign of healthcare bias. We examined whether this bias in medical care is associated with a legitimizing process involving two psychosocial factors: threat perception and level of intergroup contact.
One hundred eighty six Portuguese health professionals (55.6% clinicians; 44.4% nurses; 78.5% female; Mage = 45.83, range = 23 and 71) completed a questionnaire on prejudiced attitudes toward immigrants, perceptions of health-specific threats, bias in medical practice and level of contact with immigrant patients.
For healthcare providers who have more contact with immigrant patients, the perceived health threat mediated the relationship between prejudiced attitudes and treatment bias. In contrast, for healthcare providers with less contact with immigrant patients, the perceived threat was not associated with treatment bias.
These findings help to understand the persistence of lower quality medical treatment among immigrants, providing guidelines for future research. In particular, they suggest that perceiving immigrants as a threat to public health is indicative of the providers' engagement in a legitimizing process of self-reported biased treatment, making this engagement necessary only for providers with greater levels of contact with immigrant patients. (PsycINFO Database Record
移民往往接受的医疗质量较低，这可能是医疗保健偏见的一个迹象。我们研究了这种医疗保健中的偏见是否与涉及两个社会心理因素的合法化过程有关：威胁感知和群体间接触程度。
186 名葡萄牙卫生专业人员（55.6%为临床医生；44.4%为护士；78.5%为女性；平均年龄=45.83，范围为 23 至 71 岁）完成了一份关于对移民的偏见态度、对健康特定威胁的感知、医疗实践中的偏见以及与移民患者接触程度的问卷。
对于与移民患者有更多接触的医疗保健提供者，感知到的健康威胁中介了偏见态度与治疗偏见之间的关系。相比之下，对于与移民患者接触较少的医疗保健提供者，感知到的威胁与治疗偏见无关。
这些发现有助于理解移民中较低质量医疗治疗的持续存在，为未来的研究提供了指导。特别是，它们表明，将移民视为对公共卫生的威胁，表明提供者参与了自我报告的治疗偏见的合法化过程，这种参与对于与移民患者接触程度较高的提供者来说是必要的。
