United States – The gender of your doctor may play a part in your prognosis: The novel’s studies have revealed that the patients who the female physicians in the hospitals treat are less likely to die.
Within the patients treated by a female doctor, death occurred in 10.15% of the men and 8.2% of the women, while the statistics were 10.23% for men and 8.4% for women when they were treated by a male doctor, according to the study results released April 22 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, as reported by HealthDay.
Variations in Patient Care
In fact, this is a highly contentious observation, that the patient outcome should be the same even if both men and women practice medicine in the similar fashion reported by one of the senior authors Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa. He is the professor-in-residence of medicine by the department of general internal medicine and health services research which is located in LA.
“Our findings indicate that female and male physicians practice medicine differently, and these differences have a meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes,” Tsugawa said in a UCLA news release.
Research Methodology and Findings
For the study, the researchers analyzed the Medicare claims data, which included 458,100 females and more than 319,800 males. This data was gathered from 2016 to 2019. Among the 113,904 patients, approximately 31% were treated by female doctors.
Even though patients were not more likely to die with female doctors than their male counterparts, they were less inclined to get hospitalized again within one month of being discharged, as evident from the study.
They had several hypotheses explaining why male doctors could have lower healing rates than female doctors treating women.
Potential Explanations and Implications
Female patients have been thought to have less serious illnesses by male doctors, according to the findings. According to past research, women often have their pain underestimated by male doctors, their heart and intestinal symptoms ignored, and their stroke risk is estimated inadequately.
In addition to this, it could also be that women communicate better and are more comfortable with female doctors, thus raising their chances of disclosing vital information to help in making good diagnoses and treatments.
Research must go further into the effects and reasons of male doctors’ ways of medical practice, and what this difference does to the patients care, Tsugawa said.
“Further research on the underlying mechanisms linking physician gender with patient outcomes and why the benefit of receiving treatment from female physicians is larger for female patients has the potential to improve patient outcomes across the board,” Tsugawa said.
Tsugawa further commented that this indicates that there should be room for zero gender biases in doctors’ salaries.
Addressing Gender Bias in Healthcare
“It is important to note that female physicians provide high-quality care, and therefore, having more female physicians’ benefits patients from a societal point-of-view,” Tsugawa said, as reported by HealthDay.
A 2021 study published in the Health Affairs journal found that female doctors currently in practice earned around USD 2 million less than their male colleagues. This sum is calculated for their expected 40-year career.