Background: Patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) experience inferior health outcomes. The end-of-life period represents a particularly vulnerable time for LEP patients who may not receive optimal symptom management due to language barriers and other factors. There is limited data on disparities in provider practices around opioid administration based on patient LEP status, particularly at […]

Background: Prior studies have found Black and Hispanic patients are more likely to experience disparities in pain management. Fewer studies have evaluated pain control based on age, sex, body mass index (BMI), or presence of a substance use disorder (SUD). While factors influencing management of acute pain are complex, striving for adequate pain control remains […]

Background: Increasing evidence points towards incarceration causing poor health, with one study estimating that every year in prison is associated with a two-year reduction in life expectancy (1). Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among incarcerated females (2,3). No study has yet examined whether this increased rate of cervical cancer diagnosis persists after release. […]

Background: Previous studies have identified racial differences in sepsis incidence and sepsis mortality. Some evidence points towards differential treatment and subsequent sepsis outcomes in Black versus White patients. However, it is unclear to what extent racial differences exist in presentation and subsequent interpretation of complaints in the early phase of sepsis. Using History and Physical […]

Background: Oxygen saturation (SpO2) is often overestimated in darker skinned individuals (1–3), but the ideal method to quantify this phenomenon and measure its impact on clinical outcomes is unclear. Studying the distributions of SpO2 may not be the appropriate method because these distributions are influenced by clinicians’ real time efforts to maintain SpO2 in a […]

Background: Ensuring that hospitalized patients have a clearly documented Advance Care Plan (ACP) is important to provide them with goal-concordant care. Our institution undertook an inpatient Quality Improvement (QI) initiative to improve accessible ACP documentation. Though this work significantly improved ACP documentation rates, ACP rates for Latinx patients were significantly lower than those of the […]

Background: The benefits of breastfeeding for infants and women are well established with the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics to breastfeed for at least 1 year. However, balancing clinical responsibilities with the mental, physical, and time load for breastfeeding physician mothers returning from parental leave proves extremely difficult and contributes to gender disparities […]

Background: Pain is ubiquitous; the 2019 National Health Survey indicated that 20.4% of adults had chronic pain and that for 7.4% of adults, pain limited work or life activities. Earlier research found racial disparities in the management of pain and opioid prescriptions in emergency department and surgical settings, but research has been more limited in […]