Female Medical Practitioners' Special Touch

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"Male and female physicians] practise medicine differently, and these differences have a meaningful impact on patients' health outcomes."

"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."

Researcher Yusuke Tsugawa

A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reached the conclusion that patients gain a small, yet significant boost to survival should their doctor happen to be female, according to researchers at the University of California Los Angeles. The researchers studied insurance claims data for 485,100 female patients and 318,800 males, determining how many of these patients died or were re-admitted within 30 days of seeing a doctor.

 

"Patients have lower mortality and re-admission rates when treated by female physicians", for both male and female genders, the study found. Their results indicated that while 8.15 percent of female patients died treated by a female doctors, mortality rate when a male doctor was seen turned out to be a "clinically significant" 8.38 percent, a difference that may appear negligible (out of every 1,000 patients) but it meant that two more patients survived who were treated by a female physician.

 

04-24-2024

 

The researchers speculated that the difference could be the result of female doctors being more accomplished in communicating with female patients since female patients who were seen by female doctors also were less likely to be readmitted; 15.23 percent, compared to 16.71 percent. "The benefit of receiving treatments from female physicians is larger for female patients than for male patients"; the difference in death rates, however, remained present for males.

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With female physicians in attendance, male patients experienced a 10.15 percent mortality rate in comparison to a male doctor's 10.23 percent mortality rate; one fewer death per 1,000 patients. 

 

According to 2022 figures from the Canadian Institute of Health Information, in Canada, 49.7 percent of family doctors, and 40.2 percent of specialist doctors were female practitioners.