Female doctors 'provide better patient care' than male counterparts

Research looks at four years' worth of data and 1.5 million hospital visits

Female doctors may be more likely to provide preventive care more often (file photo) (iStock)

Female doctors offer better patient care than their male counterparts, according to a new study.

The research looked at four years of data and 1.5 million hospital visits and found patients who are seen by female doctors had significantly lower mortality and readmission rates.

The findings, published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal, suggests if male doctors performed as well as their female counterparts approximately 32,000 lives would be saved.

“There is evidence that men and women may practice medicine differently,” the study says.

“Literature has shown that female physicians may be more likely to adhere to clinical guidelines, provide preventive care more often, use more patient-centred communication, perform as well or better on standardized examinations, and provide more psychosocial counselling to their patients than do their male peers.”

Vineet Arora, University of Chicago's associate professor of medicine, said the explanation is likely to be due to a range of factors.

"It could be something the doctor is doing. It could be something about how the patient is reacting to the doctor," she told the Washington Post.

“Having a female physician is an asset.”

The study helps to disprove the claim that women underperform compared to males and has been approved by the Harvard Medical School Institutional Review Board, the Cosmopolitan reported.