After many years of researching the main cause of death in the United States population, heart disease, a new eyebrow-raising study has suggested female heart attack patients have a higher chance of surviving if they were under the care of female physicians. The study was conducted by groups of researchers at Harvard Business School, Olin Business School at Washington University, and Carlson School of Management at University of Minnesota Business School. The results agree with a notion known as, “gender concordance,” a term used to describe the relationship between physician gender and patient gender and the outcomes associated with the quality of care. A possible suggestion to attribute the results found in the study would be that woman physicians communicate with their patients differently than male physicians. The study focused on approximately half a million patients in the Florida Hospital database during the span of 21 years. Female patients who were treated in the emergency department had a 5.4% higher chance of surviving an acute myocardial infarction in the case that treatment was followed by a female doctor. Although this statistic may seem minimal, in the grand scheme of this particular research, it may lead to a more solid conclusion in the future. Moreover, the study showed that male and female patients experience differences in presenting symptoms for heart attacks. Women who present with heart attacks encounter flu-like symptoms and often have what is commonly known as a “silent” heart attack.
Dr. Robert H. Shmerling, author of Harvard health Publishing blog said, “Female physicians may spend more time with their patients, and this could allow the doctor to get a better sense of the patient’s symptoms and help ensure that her recommendations are understood well by the patient.” Furthermore, Dr. Shmerling continued to comment that future research will be done to confirm an understanding about why there are certain differences in the nature of how male and female doctors practice.
It is evident that more research needs to be measured regarding this new study. However, it may be that these findings have the potential to lead improvements in the quality of healthcare and significant increase in the survival rates of heart attack patients.