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The salaries of male doctors are usually higher. However, studies show that the mortality among patients is lower when their doctor is a woman. How empathy, more characteristic of women, helps in the fight against diseases, says a practicing oncologist.
Empathic Approach
Empathy, which is more characteristic of women, helps to establish contact in the doctor-patient relationship and, accordingly, to establish a more accurate diagnosis. Women feel more comfortable talking to female doctors as it is easier to speak with them in confidence.
The results of a scientific study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 showed that female physicians were more likely to prescribe screening procedures in the form of a Pap test (a study of changes in the cells of the cervix) and mammography to their patients than male colleagues. Further research has also shown that female physicians tend to be more patient-centered.
Practice features
In the study found that female primary care physicians spent more time listening to patients than male counterparts.
Doctor men , are able to listen to the patient for 47 seconds before interrupting him. For female doctors, this period is on average 3 minutes.
In 2018 held , which proved that patients who presented to the emergency room with heart attacks survived more often if their attending physician was a woman.
Patients develop stronger long-term relationships with female doctors, and as a result, their patients are less likely to end up in the intensive care unit than patients of male doctors.
Stereotypical thinking
A young female doctor can often face prejudice in the form of attacks from patients due to her “inexperience” and “misunderstanding of the profession.” For some reason, there is more trust in male doctors than in a fragile girl of small stature. Although the experience may be the same, and doctors still do not treat with the help of their physique.
Access to medical education is now equal both in our country and in most developed countries: then why judge professionalism only by gender?
At the top of stereotypical ideas about female doctors is the soft and caring character attributed to all women, without exception, which supposedly does not allow them to act rationally and with concentration. Another study refutes this idea.
It would seem that in such a “male” field as surgery, where endurance and endurance are required, there is no place for women. But confirmed that patients of female surgeons are more likely to survive after surgery than those treated by male doctors.
Men are also discriminated against
Yet discrimination is not a one-sided problem. Many patients, for example, share the opinion that it is uncomfortable for them to go to an obstetrician-gynecologist if it is a man. It is harder for women to share their worries with him.
However, there are also stories where empathy and respect are absent from female gynecologists towards patients. Often, unprofessionalism is expressed in violation of personal boundaries: “Give birth – and the problem will be solved”, “No one died from this.”
Violation of medical ethics and personal boundaries does not depend on gender, but on the nature of a particular person. Choosing a doctor is a matter of comfort and individual approach. The main goal of a doctor is to provide the necessary and timely assistance, so we should value professionalism more than belonging to a particular gender.
About the Developer
Evgeniya Kharchenko — oncologist, chemotherapist, candidate of medical sciences.