Being treated by a female doctor means you’re ‘less likely to die’ or end up back in hospital
YOU’RE less likely to die if you’re seen to by a female doctor, a study has found.
The outcomes of more than 700,000 over 65s who were hospitalised were studied by US and Japanese researchers.
Some 31.1 per cent of female patients and 30.6 per cent of male patients were treated by female doctors, respectively.
The team found that those with a female doctor were less likely to die within 30 days of admission or be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge compared to patients with a male doctor.
The effect was more pronounced for female patients, according to the research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Some 8.15 per cent of women died with a female doctor compared with 8.38 per cent with a male doctor.
The difference for male patients was 10.15 per cent versus 10.23 per cent.
The authors said: “The observed differences in mortality among female patients were particularly notable among those who were severely ill.”
For female patients, the difference in readmission rate between female and male doctor care was 15.51 per cent vs. 16.01 per cent, respectively.
The rate was not statistically significant for men.
The authors said there may be several reasons for this notable difference in care.
Firstly, male doctors may underestimate illness severity among female patients.
Female doctors may be better at communicating with female patients – who may also feel less embarrassed about sensitive topics.
It’s not the first time the link has been made.
Back in 2016, a study was published after scientists from the University of California in the US analysed the records of 1.5million people who were hospitalised between 2011 and 2014.
They discovered that while 11.49 per cent of patients treated by men died within 30 days of treatment, only 11.07 per cent of patients treated by women met the same fate.
Patients treated by female doctors were also less likely to be readmitted to hospital within 30 days, with just 15.02 per cent needing to return to hospital, compared to 15.57 per cent.
But male doctors were found to have treated more patients overall, according to researchers.
Meanwhile, in a study published in 2023, Canadian researchers found patients operated on by men were a quarter more likely to die within a year than those seen by women.
Previous research has suggested that female doctors are more likely to stick to clinical guidelines and provide preventative care more often.
What is the gender health gap?
The gender health gap is the idea that women have poorer health outcomes than men.
Reasons for this include misogyny, the fact that men have historically been treated and researched as the ‘default’ patient, and a lack of research into women’s health.
For example, science has not prioritised conditions that solely affect women, including endometriosis, of which one in ten women in the UK have, but wait an average of seven to eight years for diagnosis.
Women are less likely than men to correctly have heart attack correctly diagnosed, suffer more chronic pain, and those with dementia outnumber men by two to one.
Other conditions that largely affect women include eating disorders, mental health conditions, pelvic floor and incontinence issues, osteoporosis and IBS.
And then there is menopause, which has historically been a hugely taboo topic, causing a ripple effect of poor education, awareness and training of GPs.