Exploring Medical Gaslighting: Efforts to Enhance Communication and Trust in Healthcare, 2025, Shane

https://openurl.ebsco.com/EPDB:gcd:...84850719&crl=c&link_origin=scholar.google.com
Title
Exploring Medical Gaslighting: Efforts to Enhance Communication and Trust in Healthcare.

Authors
Shane, Kryss; Sood, Nikhil; Slonim, Anthony D.

Abstract
Medical gaslighting, a phenomenon whereby healthcare providers may unintentionally dismiss or minimize patients' concerns, is an emerging issue that poses a significant risk to patient safety.

It can contribute to delayed diagnoses, mismanagement of care, and the exacerbation of health disparities, particularly among marginalized populations.

Physician leaders, who play a key role in shaping institutional culture and advancing quality care, must recognize the impact of medical gaslighting and actively work toward solutions that balance the responsibilities of both physicians and patients.

This article explores the connection between medical gaslighting, priming, and patient safety, focusing on unconscious biases, diagnostic errors, and communication barriers in clinical decisionmaking.

The authors examine how priming -- when prior experiences shape perceptions and decisions -- can inadvertently exacerbate medical gaslighting.

Addressing medical gaslighting requires systematic interventions, including educating about implicit bias, promoting patient advocacy, implementing evidence-based diagnostic protocols, and potential applications for artificial intelligence.

Publication
Physician Leadership Journal, 2025, Vol 12, Issue 2, p13
ISSN
2374-4030
Publication type
Academic Journal
DOI
10.55834/plj.1846937739

 

I managed to download the full article from this link :

https://www.researchgate.net/public...Enhance_Communication_and_Trust_in_Healthcare

 

I don’t understand why the definition of medical gaslighting includes the lack of intent. Surely that is a form of gaslighting in itself.

 

They give examples of conditions, the definition of the condition and actions the provider can take:

Condition:
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)

Definition:
An illness characterized by profound fatigue that worsens with physical or mental activity and does not improve with rest.

Possible action:
A holistic approach that includes ruling out other causes, CBT, graded exercise therapy, and patient education. A physician’s recognition of the condition is essential to validation.

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At best, they are clueless.

 

The article is written in such a way that the authors would have readers believe medical gaslighting is rather new. But it has been around for a very, very long time.

 

Well, that's quite a banger to start with. Yes, it's totes unintentional.

Is that all? I don't think that's all. In fact, it's not even most of it.

I sadly can't say I have seen much in the way of leadership in medicine. There is authority, but that's a different issue. It's about who decides. And most of the decisions made by decision-makers within institutions: 1) created, 2) amplified and 3) covered up this problem. It's all intentional. The intent is not the same as the outcome, but what they intend guarantees those outcomes, and that's the same thing in the end.

Actually, none of this will make any difference. It's encouraged behavior, required in most cases. It's considered good for the most part. In fact if you ask most physicians, they'd dismiss this as even being a top 1000 concern. It's less important than the color of walls in a typical hospital, and just as much a conscious and deliberate choice.

I don't see a need to read any further, I will be judging this paper by its abstract and it will thus remain unread.

Sure is!

 

This reminds me of this reddit thread from yesterday: Had a conversation with my UK Doctor friend… this is why patients don’t feel recognised and why funding for ME/CFS is so low.

They do so much harm, and gaslighting, because they are genuinely clueless about it all. They are as detached from our lived experience of reality as the most privileged aristocrat in history has ever been.

And it's entirely their fault, entirely their responsibility. But there is no mechanism to fix this. We can't even communicate this to them (they love to pretend like they can fix it all by communicating things to us), and it's just dismissed. Literally just dismissed. Can't fix a problem when the problem is that the offender refuses to be fixed, rejects the notion that there is a problem.

 

Its a complete lack of any form of feedback system at all. The complaints system and PALS etc is all there to protect them from lawsuits, it gives them information to work out how to attack your case and to try and stop you starting it. Its not something designed to actually listen to patients, there is no reason to ever do that the doctor is always right of course. If a patient complains in public they just ignore it, without hearing both sides the patient is almost certainly lying. They have created a world where they can do no wrong, yet the patients keep dying and not getting better and they insist they just have to go harder doing the same thing. No feedback will be listened to, they have removed any chance of ever hearing any.