• Carlton Haywood, Sophie Lanzkron, Mark Hughes, Rochelle Brown, Somnath Saha, and Mary Catherine Beach.
• The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Electronic address: chaywoodjY@ihu.edu.
• J Natl Med Assoc. 2015 Jun 1; 107 (2): 89-96.

BackgroundA high level of evidence exists to suggest that negative attitudes held by clinicians toward persons with sickle cell disease serve as important barriers to the delivery of high quality care to this patient population. Little is known, though, about the characteristics of clinicians that may be predictive of these negative attitudes.MethodsDuring spring and summer 2009, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to test an intervention to improve clinician attitudes toward persons with sickle cell disease. Participating clinicians completed questionnaires regarding their demographic characteristics and their attitudes toward sickle cell patients. Principal clinician characteristics of interest included their race, professional discipline (nurse/physician), and the amount of their recent exposure to sickle cell patients in pain. Secondary analyses from this trial are presented here.Main FindingsAsian clinicians reported more negative attitudes towards these patients than did Black or White clinicians, nurses reported more negative attitudes than physicians, and clinicians with the greatest levels of recent exposure to sickle cell patients in pain reported more negative attitudes than did clinicians with lower levels of recent exposure.ConclusionsOur findings could facilitate the development of tailored educational resources needed to improve the quality of care delivered to persons with sickle cell disease, a national priority for sickle cell efforts.© 2015 National Medical Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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