Never say that equal representation of men and women in the workforce doesn’t matter—in fact, it could be lifesaving to have a woman doctor nearby.
According to Scientific American, a new study analyzed 500,000 heart attack cases in the state of Florida between 1991 and 2010, categorizing them based on the genders of the doctor and patient (i.e., male doctor with male patient, female doctor with male patient, male doctor with female patient and female doctor with female patient). For three of the categories, there wasn’t much difference: The average chance that a heart attack patient dies in the ER is about 11.9 percent. But when it came to male doctors with female patients, that number rose to 12.4 percent.
So what’s the reasoning behind the numbers? It can, of course, be very easy to just say, “Men are trash!” and leave it at that, but many researchers are hesitant to draw conclusions from this initial study, pointing out that further research needs to be done. And while that is correct, there’s also some potential explanations behind this increase.
“Even here, we see a glass ceiling on life.” A new study shows that women are more likely to die from heart attacks when they’re treated by male doctors, @edyong209 reports https://t.co/olMZ7zqRFd
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) August 6, 2018
For starters, multiple studies have found that women generally receive poorer medical treatment, or are more likely to be misdiagnosed, or diagnosed less quickly than men. This is systemic bias at play—as Scientific American points out, male doctors probably don’t listen to their female patients’ concerns as much as they do to those of male patients, whether or not they realize it.
It could even be that female doctors are just better at their jobs. Yes, that sounds like a wildly general statement, but a study found that heart attack patients had lower mortality rates overall when treated by a female doctor, as compared to a male doctor. Scientific American reports that this could be due to female doctors’ having a more evidence-based approach and longer conversations with their patients, which could help them pick up on patients’ symptoms and diagnose heart problems more quickly.
This information, while it does require more research, is crucial to the argument that more women should be in medicine, especially emergency medicine: right now, only 25 percent of emergency doctors are women. Since women with heart attacks face higher chances of death under the supervision of a male doctor, better female representation within the emergency medical field could prevent more and more women from dying by heart attacks.