Dehumanization in Medicine

@article{Haque2012DehumanizationIM,
  title={Dehumanization in Medicine},
  author={Omar S. Haque and Adam Waytz},
  journal={Perspectives on Psychological Science},
  year={2012},
  volume={7},
  pages={176 - 186}
}
Dehumanization is endemic in medical practice. This article discusses the psychology of dehumanization resulting from inherent features of medical settings, the doctor–patient relationship, and the deployment of routine clinical practices. First, we identify six major causes of dehumanization in medical settings (deindividuating practices, impaired patient agency, dissimilarity, mechanization, empathy reduction, and moral disengagement). Next, we propose six fixes for these problems… 
View on SAGE
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
219 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
10
Background Citations
74
Methods Citations
3
Results Citations
3

219 Citations

Citation Type

Citation Type

Dehumanization in medical contexts: An expanding research field
TLDR
It is supported the position that patient dehumanization is a dysfunctional strategy to cope with stress; stress can be limited in other ways, for instance by taking appropriate organizational measures.
Dehumanization in Modern Medicine and Science
Modern medicine and science share propensities to objectify and dehumanize the person. The concept of the person has been a neglected area of scholarship in medicine. This neglect is related to…
Defensive dehumanization in the medical practice: a cross-sectional study from a health care worker's perspective.
TLDR
As expected, humanizing a patient's suffering positively predicted symptoms of burnout especially for those participants that had higher levels of direct contact with patients.
Dehumanization of psychiatric patients: Experimental and clinical implications in severe alcohol-use disorders.
Dehumanization of Hospitalized Patients and Self-Dehumanization by Health Professionals and the General Population in Greece
TLDR
It is indicated that measures should be taken for health professionals so that they do not dehumanize the patient and self-dehumanize.
Dehumanization and infrahumanization.
TLDR
This work examines how people are dehumanized, exploring the range of ways in which perceptions of lesser humanness have been conceptualized and demonstrated, and examines the consequences of dehumanization, emphasizing its implications for prosocial and antisocial behavior and for moral judgment.
Dehumanizing but competent: The impact of gender, illness type, and emotional expressiveness on patient perceptions of doctors
This study is the first attempt to investigate men's and women's anticipated reactions to a consultation with a doctor holding either a dehumanizing or humanistic approach to patient treatment.…
Stress and Dehumanizing Behaviors of Medical Staff Toward Patients.
  • A. Głębocka
  • Psychology
    Advances in experimental medicine and biology
  • 2019
TLDR
Stress experienced in the work setting can have an effect on dehumanizing practices in medicine, and one of the best ways to combat dehumanization in medicine is to reduce stress by improving the work conditions.
The implicit soul: Factors between the representation of death and dehumanization of patients
TLDR
Palliative care models and death education as a resource for reducing dehumanization are discussed and it is shown that only for hospice participants, implicit and explicit spirituality predicts more humanness attribution to patients.
Dehumanization in organizational settings: some scientific and ethical considerations
TLDR
Overall, it is argued that the usefulness of dehumanization in organizational settings can be replaced by superior strategies that are ethically more acceptable and do not entail the severely negative consequences associated with dehumanization.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 81 REFERENCES
Humanising medical practice: the role of empathy
  • M. Lustig
  • Medicine, Political Science
    The Medical journal of Australia
  • 2008
TLDR
This paper argues that a precipitous increase in medical school places is a disaster in the making if the required expansion of training infrastructure fails to materialise.
Dehumanization: An Integrative Review
  • N. Haslam
  • Psychology
    Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc
  • 2006
TLDR
An expanded sense of dehumanization emerges, in which the phenomenon is not unitary, is not restricted to the intergroup context, and does not occur only under conditions of conflict or extreme negative evaluation.
Power increases dehumanization
The current paper shows that the experience or possession of power increases dehumanization—the process of denying essential elements of “humanness” in other people and perceiving them as objects or…
Rehumanizing the Other: Empathy and Reconciliation
The health effects of intra-ethnic conflict include hatred and fear among neighbors and friends who have become enemies. The dehumanization of specific groups through concomitant stereotyping does…
Empathy and the practice of medicine : beyond pills and the scalpel
TLDR
This important book seeks to restore empathy to medical practice, to demonstrate how important it is for doctors to listen to their patients, to experience and understand what their patients are feeling.
Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty
TLDR
In "Medical Choices, Medical Chances", medical decision-making is seen as a shared responsibility between doctor and patient, aimed at helping the patient get well and stay well.
Violence without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers
The paper identifies a class of violent acts that can best be described as sanctioned massacres. The special features of sanctioned massacres are that they occur in the context of a genocidal policy,…
Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care
TLDR
This book by a pioneering black surgeon takes on one of the few critically important topics that haven't figured in the heated debate over health care reform - the largely hidden yet massive injustice of bias in medical treatment.
Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities
  • A. Bandura
  • Psychology
    Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc
  • 1999
TLDR
Given the many mechanisms for disengaging moral control, civilized life requires, in addition to humane personal standards, safeguards built into social systems that uphold compassionate behavior and renounce cruelty.
The importance of empathy in the enablement of patients attending the Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital.
  • S. Mercer, D. Reilly, G. Watt
  • Medicine
    The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners
  • 2002
TLDR
Investigating patient enablement in a setting where time is less of a constraint than in primary care, in order to determine the importance of other factors in enablement found empathy to be the single most important factor.
...
1
2
3
4
5
...