What Reasoning Do Frontline Professionals Use Around Citizen‐Clients' Socioeconomic Status: Exploring the Mechanisms

ABSTRACT This paper examines socioeconomic status (SES) as an indicator for decision‐making among frontline professionals in healthcare, focusing on general practitioners (GPs). Aside from research on stereotypes, we know little about how frontline professionals reason about SES in decision‐making. This study addresses this gap by investigating how GPs use SES to develop care for patients with varying SES backgrounds. Based on qualitative interviews, the study identifies three SES reasonings that are closely intertwined with the status of patients: (1) status preservation reasoning describes how GPs interpret SES cues and status stability in relation to what needs to be preserved, (2) social distance reasoning helps explain how social distance creates a reference point when helping the patient, and (3) together reasoning describes how GPs use patients' busyness and educational level to develop treatment plans together with the patient. This study contributes to the existing literature by distinguishing SES reasonings in frontline professionals' decision‐making.