Evaluated medical women save considerably more lives

Higher chances of survival when patients are treated by medical doctors
Apparently the gender of the medical staff has an influence on the treatment success of patients. According to a new study, hospital patients' chances of survival are better when they are treated by female doctors rather than their male counterparts.

Lower risk of death
According to a recent study, hospital patients have a lower risk of dying if they are treated by medical doctors than by their male colleagues. For their investigation, the Boston scientists evaluated the data of over 1.5 million US seniors with internal medical complaints. The study results have now been published in the journal "Jama Internal Medicine".

According to a study, the gender of medical staff has an influence on the chances of survival of hospital patients. Their risk of death is therefore lower when they are treated by female doctors. (Image: Robert Kneschke / fotolia.com)

Difference of 32,000 deaths per year
According to the data, male patients lost almost 11.5 percent among the patients. However, when hospitalized patients were treated by a woman, the mortality rate was 0.43 percentage points lower.

Although the difference may seem very small at first, it is "clinically significant," according to the scientists, because the bottom line is a difference of 32,000 fewer deaths annually, extrapolated to all US hospital patients.

Women and men are treated differently
There is no justification for the advantage over the male colleagues in the study. It is said, however, that it was known from previous research that men and women approach treatment differently.

According to this, female doctors take more time for their patients, place more value on communication with them and pay more attention to their worries. In addition, they are stricter to medical guidelines.

It is unclear whether the difference is due to female treatment skills
However, it remains questionable whether the small difference actually goes back to the treatment skills of the doctors.

As the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (SZ) reports, Stefan Lange, deputy director of the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), certifies that the authors of the study have made every possible effort to calculate outcomes such as the age and place of work of the physicians.

However, for example, different working hours were not taken into account by women and men.

Female doctors earn much less
The physicians Anna Parks and Rita Redberg of the University of California in San Francisco write in a comment to the study that the results should encourage hospitals to think and act.

Female doctors in the US still earn an average of eight percent less than their male counterparts. But "women doctors do equivalent or potentially even better work than their male colleagues," they say. (Ad)