Background: General Practitioners (GPs) are the first point of contact for people from ethnic and migrant groups
; who have health problems. Discrimination can occur in this health care sector. Few studies, however, have investigated
; implicit and explicit biases in general practice against ethnic and migrant groups. This study, therefore, investigated
; the extent of implicit ethnic biases and willingness to adapt care to migrant patients among trainee GPs, and
; the factors involved therein, in order to measure explicit bias and explore a dimension of cultural competence.
; Methods: In 2021, data were collected from 207 trainee GPs in the French-speaking part of Belgium. The respondents
; passed an Implicit Association Test (IAT), a validated tool used to measure implicit biases against ethnic groups.
; An explicit attitude of willingness to adapt care to diversity, one of the dimensions of cultural competence, was measured
; using the Hudelson scale.
; Results: The overwhelming majority of trainee GPs (82.6%, 95% CI: 0.77 – 0.88) had implicit preferences for their
; ingroup to the detriment of ethnic and migrant groups. Overall, the majority of respondents considered it the
; responsibility of GPs to adapt their attitudes and practices to migrants’ needs. More than 50% of trainee GPs, however,
; considered it the responsibility of migrant patients to adapt to the values and habits of the host country.
; Conclusions: This study found that the trainee GPs had high to very high levels of implicit ethnic bias and that they
; were not always willing to adapt care to the values of migrants. We therefore recommend that they are made aware
; of this bias and we recommend using the IAT and Hudelson scales as educational tools to address ethnic biases in
; primary care.