Experts say female doctors tend to spend more time with their patients.
- Research published this week suggests
that men and women have better outcomes when they are treated by a female
physician.
- The study adds to a growing
body of research that patients consistently do better when they are under
the care of a female physician.
- Experts say male physicians
should consider the findings of the study and reflect on how they might
improve their own practice.
People treated by female
physicians have lower rates of mortality and readmission than those treated by
male physicians.
That’s according
to research published today in the journal Annals
of Internal Medicine.
In their study,
researchers reported that there was a clinically significant difference in
outcomes for people depending on the gender of their treating physician.
“What our findings
indicate is that female and male physicians practice medicine differently, and
these differences have a meaningful impact on patients’ health outcomes,” Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, a senior author of the study and an
associate professor-in-residence of medicine in the division of General
Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of
Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, said in a press
statement.
“Further research on the
underlying mechanisms linking physician gender
with patient outcomes, and why the benefit of receiving the treatment from
female physicians is larger for female patients, has the potential to improve
patient outcomes across the board,” he added.
Tsugawa and his
colleagues examined data from Medicare claims made
between 2016 to 2019. The data included more than 458,100 female patients and
more than 318,800 male patients. Roughly 31% of both the male and female
patient groups were treated by a female doctor.
The researchers reported
that the mortality rate
for female patients when they were treated by a female doctor was 8.15% compared
with 8.38% when treated by a male physician. The researchers regard this as a
clinically significant difference.
Among males, the
mortality rate was 10.15% when treated by females compared with 10.23% for
males.
Female
and male doctors practice medicine differently
The researchers say
there could be a number of potential reasons for the difference in outcomes
between female and male physicians.
“We know that there are
differences in care delivery patterns by male versus female physicians across
fields of medicine. Female physicians spend more time with patients and spend
more time engaging in shared medical decision making and partnership
discussions than male counterparts,” Dr. Lisa
Rotenstein, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor and medical
director at the University of California San Francisco, told Medical
News Today.
“Evidence from the
outpatient setting demonstrates that female physicians spend more time on the electronic health
record than male counterparts and deliver higher quality care,”
Rotenstein noted. “In the surgical realm,
female physicians spend longer on a surgical procedure and have lower rates of
postoperative readmissions. We need to be asking ourselves how to provide the
training and incentives so that all doctors can emulate the care provided by
female physicians.”
In 2022, the most recent
data available, females accounted for 37% of physicians practicing in the United States.
The specialities with
the highest percentage of female physicians were pediatrics (65%) and hospice
and palliative medicine (62%)
Sports medicine and
orthopedic surgery had the lowest percentage of female physicians (7% and 6%,
respectively).
Why
women tend to be better physicians
The new study is the
latest in a growing body of research that suggests patient outcomes are better
when people are treated by female physicians.
Christopher
Wallis, PhD, an assistant professor in the Division of Urology at the
University of Toronto, has researched postoperative outcomes based on the sex
of both surgeon and patient.
He says the findings
published this week aren’t surprising.
“Across many fields of
medicine, numerous studies have demonstrated improved outcomes (whether
mortality, readmissions, or others) among patients treated by women physicians.
These data recapitulate those findings,” Wallis, who wasn’t involved in the
study, told Medical News Today.
“Clearly, there will
always be variation between physicians. What we are seeing here is a systematic
difference in which patients treated by female physicians… fare better than
those treated by male physicians,” he added. “It is not surprising to me to see
this for a number of reasons. First, from data going back decades now, we know
that women and men practice medicine differently with particular differences in
communication styles and guideline adherence. It’s not surprising to me to see
these differences translate to patients’ outcomes. Second, both more widely in
society and certainly in medicine, women are held to arguably a higher standard
than men. This is an exaggerated phenomenon in surgery and may explain some of
the differences we’ve seen there.”
Why
male physicians should consider how they practice medicine
With female physicians
making up little over a third of all practicing physicians in the United
States, the experts who spoke with Medical News Today say
they hope male physicians reflect on their own practice and consider areas to
improve.
“I would love for male
physicians to look at these data seriously and interrogate their own practices.
There is often a tendency to discount data like these because they are
uncomfortable or may feel threatening. However, that kind of response will not
help patients,” Dr. Arghavan Salles, a clinical associate professor of
medicine at Stanford University in California who was not involved in the
study, told Medical News Today.
“If, instead, male
physicians can approach these data with curiosity as to why patients may have
worse outcomes in their hands, they may begin to identify how to improve the
care they provide,” she said. “For example, a study of surgeons performing cholecystectomies found
patients had better outcomes when their surgeon was female, rather than male.
One of the findings in that study was that surgery took just a few minutes
longer when performed by female surgeons. Was that additional time spent double
checking, making sure everything was fine before the end of the procedure? Was
that time spent performing more careful dissection to try to prevent
complications? That study did not answer those questions, but they are things
to consider.”
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