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Orli Etingin, M.D.
Director, Center for Women’s Healthcare, Associate Professor of Medicine, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center
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YES
Women may find it easier to get care from female physicians for several reasons. Epidemiologic data show that female primary-care givers tend to pay greater attention to preventive care for their female patients.
In one published study, female primary-care physicians adhered more closely to the accepted regimen of mammography and Pap smears, to give two examples, than male primary-care doctors in an outpatient setting.
Some female patients feel intimidated at times by male doctors. It’s an individual issue, but female physicians tend to be more communicative, spend more time talking to patients, dwell a little more on emotional issues in life, and bring patients into decision-making.
Women patients will follow a physician’s advice, irrespective of gender, if they feel the doctor has listened to them and has given them information upon which to make a decision or to guide their own health care. A directive-such as “go get this test”-is less likely to work with female than male patients.
Some women feel that female doctors can relate to certain life events and will be more understanding than a male physician of, say, postpartum depression or a difficult menopause. That is not invariably true, but as a group women doctors tend to be more empathic about such situations.
For some female patients, empowering them about their health care helps them follow through. For them, women doctors are particularly helpful.
There are some women for whom all this doesn’t matter. Yet an emerging group of women are seeking more involvement, communication, and empowerment by their physicians in their health care. They often seek female doctors.
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Neil H. Brooks, M.D.
Family Physician, Rockville, Conn.; Speaker, Congress of Delegates, American Academy of Family Physicians
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NO
For some people, gender may be important, but if we start endorsing gender as a criterion for choosing a physician, that’s taking the road of race or religion as criteria. Competency is far more important than gender.
Primary-care physicians are trained and qualified to handle care from birth to death, not just through one phase of life. A quality relationship should be continuous and as free as possible from the influence of third parties.
Studies of physician gender and patient benefit are few, often in conflict, and sometimes poorly controlled for confounding factors such as the patient’s insurance status or reasons for selecting a physician at all.
One built-in bias of these studies may be that women who seek women physicians expect to be more satisfied and report self-fulfilling prophecies.
It would be the same if one specifically sought an older or a younger physician. One study found satisfaction more related to age than to sex. Women expressed greater satisfaction with older physicians.
Women and men do communicate in different ways. But individual variance is far greater than group variance. It often depends on how the patient wants to communicate.
Women physicians do tend to spend more time with their patients and do more services. In return, patients often express high satisfaction. One would expect that with longer and more intensive visits.
As to empathy, few believe that cardiologists who’ve had MIs deal better with their patients. The same is true for gender. Some men I communicate with well, and some I don’t.
In establishing a quality relationship with a physician, what is important is competency, approach to prevention, and communication style-not gender, race, or religion.
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