Attitudes and regard for specific medical conditions among Australian emergency medicine clinicians

To quantify the attitude ED clinicians hold towards patients presenting with different medical conditions, including a novel pandemic condition.

A cross-sectional study of emergency doctors and nurses utilising the Medical Condition Regard Scale (MCRS); a validated tool used to capture the bias and emotions of clinicians towards individual medical conditions. The five conditions presented to participants each represent a classical medical, complex medical, psychiatric/substance use, somatoform and a novel medical condition.

One hundred and ninety-six clinicians were included in the study including 116 nurses and 80 doctors. Concerning each condition, both medical and nursing staff demonstrated the highest regard for a classical medical condition (58 ± 5 and 57 ± 6, respectively). Significantly different from the classical medical condition, the lowest MCRS scores were for the somatoform condition (36 ± 10) for emergency doctors and the substance use condition (39 ± 11) for emergency nurses. Regard for a novel condition (i.e., COVID-19 infection) was comparably high among both cohorts.

Emergency doctors and nurses generally hold lower regard for complex medical conditions with behavioural components, including substance use disorders and somatoform conditions.