WOMEN TREATED BY FEMALE DOCTORS ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE READMITTED OR DIE: STUDY

Sat 04 May 2024:

Women treated by female doctors have a lower risk of dying or needing to be readmitted to the hospital, according to a recent study. At first, gender involvement in a medical scenario could appear strange. However, after you cut through the layers, you can see why this would be the case. One of the reasons is that medical students are not given enough training on how to handle women’s health issues.

The study looks at those 65 years of age and older, and it was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine on Monday. Approximately 8.15% of women treated by female doctors passed away within 30 days, compared to 8.38% of women treated by male doctors.

The difference might seem small, but erasing this gap could save up to 5000 women’s lives every year.

Some experts aren’t convinced that the new study proves a physician’s gender makes a big difference, but here’s what the study found.

Female doctors are more empathetic towards women and minorities: Study

The study included about 800,000 male and female patients who were hospitalised from 2016 through 2019. The gender of the doctor had no impact on the risk of death or hospital readmission of male patients. The data only showed the gap between the treatments of female patients when treated by different genders.

Though the study did not explain why women feel better when treated by other women, other studies have shown that women are less likely to experience “miscommunication, misunderstanding and bias” when treated by female doctors, said lead author of the study Dr Atsushi Miyawaki. Miyawaki is a senior assistant professor of health services research at the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine.

The study is part of a growing field of research examining why women and minorities tend to receive worse medical care than men and white patients. For example, women and minority patients are up to 30 per cent more likely to be misdiagnosed than white men.

“Our pain and our symptoms are often dismissed,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. “It may be that women physicians are more aware of that and are more empathetic.”

Part of the problem, Miyawaki said, is that medical students get “limited training in women’s health issues.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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