Title
Impact of Gender on Doctor-Patient Communication and Emotion: Exploratory Analysis
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.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1109/ISSE49799.2020.9272228
2020 IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering (ISSE)
Keywords
DocType
ISSN
Gender dyads,gender concordance,gender discordance,sentiment analysis,doctor-patient communication,natural language processing,text mining,electronic health record,communication accommodation theory,affective events theory,emotions
Conference
2687-881X
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-7281-8603-0
0
0.34
References 
Authors
4
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Avishek Choudhury152.92
Safa Elkefi200.68
Onur Asan300.68