Health professionals will experience patients who express their prejudices indirectly or directly in the following ways:

• Patients request a nurse of the same race.
• Patients express their racial preference through negative comments and intolerant behavior.
• Patients exhibit noncompliant behavior to silently protest their dissatisfaction with the minority caregiver.

These covert and overt examples of prejudices demonstrate the cultural implications that occur during patient interactions. These can include other cultural issues such as religion, food, language, and nationality.

In addition to racial prejudices, there are general prejudices that health professionals face on the job. One example is the prejudices about male nurses. The following are preconceived judgments and opinions that male nurses report that they face in the workplace:

• Patients make assumptions about male nurses’ sexuality.
• Patients think they chose the nursing profession so they can “see female patients naked.”
• Patients assume male nurses are physicians because most nurses are female.
• Patients assume male nurses became nurses because they were not able to succeed in the pre-med track in college.
• Patients may request a female nurse because they assume that male nurses are not as skilled, caring, or empathetic as female nurses.

There are also prejudices among and between health professionals. One preconceived judgment held by some is that physicians are more qualified than nurses. This can serve to relegate nurses to a less important or inferior position and elevate the status of physicians. As a result, this prejudice maintains the power imbalance between the professions.