Medical Embarrassment: Effects of Doctor Familiarity and Patient Gender

Patients often feel intense embarrassment over exams with their doctors and increasingly evidence shows that embarrassment interferes with medical care in a variety of ways. Three studies examined whether previous experience with a physician vs. seeing the physician for the first time affects embarrassment in two types of situations. Participants imagined themselves in six medical embarrassment scenarios in the context of consulting a doctor of their own gender (Studies 1 & 2) or opposite gender (Study 3). Three scenarios related to bodily embarrassment and three related to judgment-concern embarrassment (Consedine, Krivoshekova, & Harris. 2007). Greater familiarity with the doctor induced more judgment-concern embarrassment but less bodily embarrassment. This interaction was evident in both a collegiate sample (n = 384), a US national representative sample (n = 501) with same gender doctor, and a US national representative sample (n = 474) with the opposite gender doctor. Practical suggestions for reducing embarrassment are discussed.