{"id":3943,"date":"2016-12-19T22:46:04","date_gmt":"2016-12-20T03:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/?p=3943"},"modified":"2017-04-11T15:16:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T20:16:08","slug":"femineverything-can-say-women-doctors-just-better-everyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/2016\/12\/19\/femineverything-can-say-women-doctors-just-better-everyone\/","title":{"rendered":"FemInEVERYTHING? \u00a0Can We Say That Women Doctors are Just Better for Everyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Recently, my friend had a patient. The guy, patient with history of autoimmune disease came in with \u00a0pain, anxiety and tachycardia.\u00a0 She walked in and felt the psychosomatic overlay. What was her intervention? Meds? Psych? Nope…<\/span><\/p>\n She closed the door, held his hand, pulled out her\u00a0mom self and let him tell her\u00a0for 15 long minutes about his hard life. Nurse watched the monitor as his heart rate dropped in a linear fashion. \u00a0Better than beta blocker or benzos. Took freaking forever. But no labs, no consults, discharged 45 minutes later completely happy with his care. <\/span><\/p>\n Not sure\u00a0know many of our\u00a0male colleagues could, or would even attempt, that Jedi trick.<\/p>\n On Monday December 19, JAMA Internal Medicine published an article \u201c<\/span>Comparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates for Medicare Patients Treated by Male vs Female Physicians<\/span><\/a>\u201d by Tsugawa and colleagues. \u00a0The article, picked up by many popular news sources like <\/span>The Atlantic<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>NPR<\/span><\/a>, looked at 30-day mortality and readmission rates for elderly hospitalized patients with Medicare. \u00a0The authors found that patients cared for by female hospitalists (as opposed to male hospitalists) had significantly lower rates of both readmission and 30-day mortality. \u00a0Over the course of the study, the authors concluded that if every one of the 1.5 million patients they reviewed was taken care of by a female doc, 32,000 lives would have been saved.<\/span><\/p>\n The authors postulate many reasons for this life-saving difference. \u00a0Previous research has shown that patients tend to speak longer with female physicians,<\/span> and there is some data that shows that female physicians may adhere to guidelines more frequently.<\/span> According to the authors female physicians are more likely to provide preventive care, practice patient-centered communication and provide more psychosocial counseling to their patients than their male peers. \u00a0All reasons why this particular patient population would fare better.<\/span><\/p>\n