Women-doctors are better

Studies prove that they are more attentive to patient complaints and are more effectively treated

The risk of postoperative complications is reduced if the operation is carried out by a team of doctors, where there are women surgeons and anesthesiologists, Canadian doctors who analyzed the results of surgical interventions in Canada for 10 years have come to this conclusion. "Cold" tells other studies about this, which prove that medicine benefits from gender diversity.

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On May 15, in the British Journal of Surgery scientific journal, a study of Canadian specialists was published , who studied how the gender variety of doctors in operating rooms affect the restoration of patients. For this, the researchers studied the results of more than 700 thousand operations in 88 hospitals of the Canadian province of Ontario conducted from 2009 to 2019. Only procedures carried out under anesthesia were included in the review.

The results showed that if the patient is observed by a team of doctors where women make up at least 35%, then the risk of postoperative complications within 90 days after surgery is reduced by 3%. The chances of the appearance of complications in the patient are lower, if both the surgeon and an anesthetist are women. The authors note that this conclusion is confirmed by the work of other researchers that an increase in jobs for women in companies increases business efficiency. “In various fields - business , finance , industry, technology, education and music - gender and sexual variety improves the collective result,” the report says.

Not only justice

The authors of the study conclude that gender diversity among doctors is not just a matter of social justice, but an important part of improving the treatment process. The leadership of hospitals should hire more women surgeons and anesthetists, because in the future this can increase the level of patient satisfaction. Researchers indicate that, despite the obvious advantages of gender diversity in medicine, it is even more difficult for women to get a job in this area: the number of women-anesthesiologists and surgeons over the past 10 years has grown by only 5%.

At the same time, the co -author of the study by Julie Hallet believes that the performance indicators of exclusively female groups will be the same as male. The best results, in her opinion, will be shown by the teams of doctors, where there are doctors of both sexes.

The authors of the work refer to a similar study of 2023, where it was studied how the costs of medicine depend on which gender the attending physician was. The results showed that the healthcare system spends about 30% less money on patients treated by women.

Search and effective

The influence of the sex of doctors on the effectiveness of the treatment of patients has been studied closely for the past few years. So, in 2017, American doctors published an analysis of the mortality rate and repeated hospitalizations of elderly patients. The sample included data on the hospitalization of more than a million people, the condition of which was monitored within a month after they went to the hospital. The authors concluded that during hospitalization among patients who were treated by a female doctor, the level of mortality and re-hospitalization below compared to patients observed in male doctors.

According to researchers, this is due to the difference in the approaches to treatment. For example, specialists more often than their male colleagues use proof medicine methods, they are better to conduct examinations and focus more on patient needs. And men-doctors make less effort to solve complex problems of patients.

The continuation of this study was published in 2024 - and again the mortality rate was lower in patients treated by women. The co-author of the work, Dr. Lisa Rotenstein, explained such results by the fact that female doctors spend more time with the patient and are more likely to participate in teamwork to select effective treatment.
In 2019, Canadian experts also studied how the sex of the doctor affects how carefully they study information about the patient. Gynecologists-oncologists with different experience participated in the experiment. It turned out that men make decisions faster, while women study data longer and more thoroughly.