Do Female Docs Provide Better Care to Their Hospitalized Patients Than Male Counterparts?

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

According to Medicare data analysis, "elderly hospital patients seen by female internists were less likely to die or be readmitted in the short run than those treated by male physicians."

The results of a study approved by the Harvard Medical School Institutional review Board and published in JAMA today show "the advantages associated with female physicians persisted across eight common medical conditions and across patients' severity of illness".

"There is evidence in the primary care setting suggesting that, compared with male physicians, female physicians are more likely to practice evidence-based medicine, perform as well or better on standardized examinations, and provide more patient-centered care. Patients of female primary care physicians also experience fewer emergency department visits compared with patients of male primary care physicians."

What do you think female doctors do differently than male doctors?

Do you have a preference for the gender of your physician(s)? If so, what is this preference based on?

For more about this study, please go to:

Comparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates for Medicare Patients Treated by Male vs Female Physicians

[BostonFNP, APRN]

You go girls!

I hope that male providers invest their efforts in learning from their female colleagues what they can do to improve their outcomes rather than focusing on how to discredit the growing body of data. I am surprised they didn't use the discharging physician, at least for the readmit rates, but every study has it's quirks.

Couple this with the fact that females get paid less for the same work...

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

I applaud BostonFNP for surfacing this issue before I could. It's always amusing to see how quickly findings which reveal any sort of gender advantage are disparaged. The evidence of gender-based brain differences is accumulating. So in this case, it would appear that female physicians are better at managing chronic illnesses of elderly patients. I'm sure that there are other types of patients in which male physicians have the advantage... maybe trauma surgery?

I respect the evidence. But of course, (as illustrated in this very study) that would seem to be a characteristic of lady-brains - LOL.

[BostonFNP, APRN]

One of the more objective findings that stand out for me, is that the female docs were statistically more likely to stick to practice guidelines vs their male counterparts.

This is a really interesting issue right now in medicine, and you hit the nail on the head as far as how this could sway the results towards the female providers. When you take large groups of patients, a group of providers that sick to established guidelines should do better. The question many providers struggle with is that population-based medicine isn't necessarily the best thing for the individual patient.

[Asystole RN]

This study's authors claim to have controlled for all of that, and yet the gaps remained.

One of the more objective findings that stand out for me, is that the female docs were statistically more likely to stick to practice guidelines vs their male counterparts.

No, no they did not.

They did not have nearly 50% of the experience metrics for the physicians so it was excluded from the main analysis.

[Asystole RN]

I applaud BostonFNP for surfacing this issue before I could. It's always amusing to see how quickly findings which reveal any sort of gender advantage are disparaged. The evidence of gender-based brain differences is accumulating. So in this case, it would appear that female physicians are better at managing chronic illnesses of elderly patients. I'm sure that there are other types of patients in which male physicians have the advantage... maybe trauma surgery?

I respect the evidence. But of course, (as illustrated in this very study) that would seem to be a characteristic of lady-brains - LOL.

There are definitely biological and social differences between males and females. What is really amusing are those who may not have read the study and are drawing conclusions from weak correlations.

There are definitely differences, the question remains whether those differences are biological, social, or a combination thereof.

When there is an average patient load difference of more than 30% between the two subjects being studied there is a glaring issue. What should have been investigated more are the effects of patient load on patient mortality and how they were able to account for that variable.

[BostonFNP, APRN]

When there is an average patient load difference of more than 30% between the two subjects being studied there is a glaring issue. W

Where are you getting this figure from exactly? The estimated annual hospitalizations per physician?

[SaltySarcasticSally, LPN, RN]

I've actually found male doctors to be willing to spend time with me on things! I haven't had great experiences with female providers. I have a male PCP, OB, and GI.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

Female physicians listen better. How's that for a sweeping generalization? In my personal experience, however, that is true. All of my providers are female. I went looking for a female GYN on purpose; and when I had breast cancer I was given a choice between two surgeons I knew nothing about. I picked the female. SHE picked the female onco-plastic surgeon, the female radiation oncologist and the female medicine oncologist. The only male on my personal healthcare team is the dentist I inherited when my female dentist left the practice.

My husband, strangely, has all female physicians as well. His response to the study was "I have never "fired" a female physician. I've "fired" a lot of male doctors." He said he's never had any difficulty getting the male physicians to listen to him (although *I* have), but sometimes he gets tired of "fighting with them." The female physicians seem to elicit his cooperation without "fighting."

Male doctors have almost killed me by ignoring ongoing complaints and persisting in their course of treatment despite lack of any improvement, by ignoring "wonky" test results and not following up, by failure to communicate a positive PAP smear (sent out one of those form letters indicating a negative PAP smear and never followed up and told me it was suspect until a year later when a frankly positive result made me check back with the previous provider) and by prescribing a medication to which I'd had previous bad reactions despite being told of those bad reactions. I've never had that sort of thing happen with a female physician, although to be fair, I've had female physicians for the last dozen years or so.

[Asystole RN]

Where are you getting this figure from exactly? The estimated annual hospitalizations per physician?

"Female physicians were younger (mean [sD] age, 42.8 [9.4] vs 47.8 [11.4] years), were more likely to have undergone osteopathic training (1577 [8.4%] vs 2770 [7.0%]), and treated fewer patients (131.9 vs 180.5 hospitalizations per year) compared with male physicians."

[Buyer beware, BSN]

This just in from the University of Common Sense:

If you like your doctor and she happens to be female, smart, compasionate, and beautiful both inside and out you may like her more than the the male of the species who has none of these qualities and you may want to get out of the hospital that much sooner for the office visit. If you know what I mean.

So it pays to be nice and attractive and smart and caring either way, xx or xy.

I hope this clears up any lingering confusion for the sake of "best practices" and the understanding of basic human nature but somehow I doubt it.

[AliNajaCat]

While driving home from a patient intake I listened to the interview on NPR of two of the physicians involved in this paper, a male and a female, married (to each other). It was their feeling that the difference could handily be laid to the fact that women are more communicative, better listeners, and more collaborative (less authoritative, less big-boss) with (mostly female) nursing. They had a number of good examples to share, too, about how this benefits actual patient care.

What this made me think of the other place where women provide most of the care and have better outcomes in primary care-- nurse practitioners.

The male of the team said they're trying hard to shoehorn emotional intelligence and better listening skills into the medical school curriculum, but it's a hard go.

[RiskManager]

I would also add to your list the osteopathic training. That may also have something to do with it.

I wondered about that: Are there key differences in osteopathic vs allopathic training that would contribute to the results of the study, or is it that there are differences in the students who select osteopathic vs. allopathic training?