Dress to Impress: Public Perception of Plastic Surgeon Attire

Abstract

Background Physician attire has been shown to impact patients’ perceptions of their provider with regards to professionalism, competency, and trustworthiness in various surgical subspecialties, except in plastic and reconstructive surgery. Objectives This study aims to address this knowledge gap and obtain objective information regarding patients’ preferences. Methods A survey was distributed to adult, English-speaking participants in the U.S. using Amazon MTurk platform from February 2020 to December 2020. Participants were asked to evaluate six attires (scrubs, scrubs w/ white coat, formal attire, formal attire w/ white coat, casual, casual w/ white coat) in terms of professionalism, competency, and trustworthiness for male and female plastic surgeons during their first encounter in clinic using a 5-point Likert scale. Results A total of 316 responses were obtained, which consists of 43.4% men and 56.6% women. Mean age of participants was 53.2 years. The highest scores across all metrics of professionalism, competency, trustworthiness, willingness to share information, confidence in the provider, and confidence in surgical outcomes were given to the formal attire with white coat group with average scores of 4.85, 4.71, 4.69, 4.73, 4.79, 4.72, respectively. The lowest scores across all metrics belonged to the casual attire group with scores of 3.36, 3.29, 3.31, 3.39, 3.29, 3.20, respectively. Patients preferred formal attires for young plastic surgeons (p=0.039). Conclusions Our study suggests that physician attire impacts patients’ perception of plastic surgeons with regards to their professionalism, competency, and trustworthiness. White coats continue to remain a powerful entity in clinical settings given that attires with white coats were consistently ranked higher.

Content and Engagement Among Plastic Surgeons on Instagram

“…19 Self-regulation by surgeons and researchers in the field also play a large role in determining what is deemed professional even as far as studies of the effect of a plastic surgeon's attire on patient–physician interaction. 20 Yet the idea of professionalism may be affected by the context of what is being judged for medical professionals. One of the most recent examples of this involves the #MedBikini movement in which a now redacted article met negative reception in the medical community due to its judgmental basis centralized around a group of vascular surgeons taking part in activities that the authors perceived as unprofessional.…”

Public Perceptions of Normal and Ideal Head Shape: A Crowdsourced Survey Analysis

“…This tool has been widely used to assess a variety of topics ranging from lay perceptions of art to impressions of physician attire. [9][10][11][12][13][14]18,19 Within the field of medicine, it is particularly well suited for plastic surgery where it has been used to assess the public's esthetic preferences. 13,14 Using this tool, we are able to provide clinicians with much needed information regarding the perception of the cephalic index.…”

Is the perception of physicians based on the type and colour of attire?

“…Furthermore, Dayani et al (2022) conducted a study with 316 participants regarding the perceptions of plastic surgeons. Among evaluated features of a physician were: professionalism, competency, trustworthiness, willingness to share information, confidence in the surgeon and confidence in positive surgical outcomes, In all categories, providers who wore formal attire with white coats or formal attire alone were ranked the highest among all age groups [2]. Models presenting attires that were accompanied by a white coat were also considered more professional and competent compared with their counterparts without white coats [2].…”

“…Building a strong patient-physician relationship begins with the first impression. This relationship impacts patient's willingness to accept difficult news from the physician, forgive mistakes, and affects how trusting and compliant a patient is when the physician explains risks and benefits of specific treatment plans [2]. Several studies have demonstrated that such relationships positively impact patient outcomes, especially in chronic, sensitive and stigmatising problems such as diabetes mellitus, cancer or mental health disorders.…”