Student Presenter(s): Kyle Gillani and Andrew Cecora
Faculty Mentor: Colleen P. Kirk
School/College: Osteopathic Medicine, Old Westbury

The doctor-patient relationship is the very foundation of medical practice and is a vital determinant of health. Any factors or underlying biases that may influence this relationship can have drastic effects on short- and long-term health outcomes. It is well established that certain colors can elicit vastly different conscious, subconscious, or unconscious reactions in the observer and research exists suggesting an association between the color worn by a physician and the patient’s perception of that physician. Further, prior research has documented the challenges faced by female physicians with respect to patient perception of their credibility. We hypothesize that scrub color will interact with the gender of a physician to influence a patient’s perception of that physician’s competence, warmth, and agreeability. This study aims to build upon the results published by Hribar, et al. with the intent of broadening the relevance and bolstering the rigor of their findings. This will be accomplished via online randomized between-subject experimentation with diverse participants blind to the study’s objectives. Dependent measures will include perceived warmth, competence, credibility, and agreeability. Data will be analyzed via ANOVA and bootstrapping for mediation analysis. The researchers further hope to determine whether and to what degree factors such as race, education level, and location, among others, bias a patient’s perception of their physician.