PRC Seminar: “Psychological and Neurobiological Predictors of Clinicians’ Pain Assessment and Treatment Decisions”

One of the main goals of research in my lab is to understand the sociocultural, psychological, and neurobiological mechanisms underlying pain assessment and treatment disparities in order to ultimately inform interventions in clinician training aimed at reducing them. I will present findings from two research studies on the pain management decisions of medical students. In one study, medical students saw mock patients over Zoom and in the other medical students engaged in virtual pain management appointments while having their brain responses measured with functional MRI. Across both studies our findings provide support for both of our hypothesized mechanisms of pain treatment disparities: 1) that clinicians may underestimate and undertreat the pain of women and minoritized patients because they do not adequately empathize with those patients’ pain, and 2) that clinician’s may inform their pain management decisions with their stereotypes about the typical pain sensitivity of individuals from the patient’s demographic group.