A new study suggests that hospitals in which women make up at least one-third of the surgical personnel may be more suitable for individuals who are undergoing specific surgical procedures. Compared to their male counterparts, this discovery adds to the expanding body of evidence suggesting that female physicians may achieve superior patient outcomes.
The most recent study, which was published on Wednesday in the British Journal of Surgery, specifically examined the correlation between the incidence of serious post-operative health complications, including death, in Canadian surgical patients during their first three months of recovery and the diversity of gender in hospital settings.
During the period of 2009 to 2019, researchers examined a total of 709,899 cases that involved significant inpatient procedures that were not emergency-related and occurred at 88 different hospitals. In conclusion, 14.4% of the patients experienced morbidity during the initial 90 days following the operation, a term that is frequently employed in the medical field to describe any adverse effect induced by a procedure or treatment.
During that time period, the likelihood of mortality or severe postoperative complications was significantly reduced due to the fact that over 35% of surgeons and anesthetists employed in hospitals were female. In contrast to facilities with a lower proportion of women in those roles, the study discovered that the probability of significant morbidity decreased by 3% for patients in those settings.
In general, the median proportion of female surgeons and anesthetists among hospital personnel was less than the optimal threshold that researchers identified for ensuring patient success, at 28% per hospital per year.
The researchers underscored the substantial decrease in the likelihood of severe postoperative complications or mortality in the months following surgery, particularly for patients who underwent procedures with a female surgeon or anesthetist as their direct provider.
They stated, “These discoveries are essential for the intentional establishment of diverse teams in order to enhance the quality of care and patient outcomes.”
This investigation is not the only one to reach these conclusions. Another study published in the journal JAMA Surgery last year discovered that patients who underwent emergency or elective operations between 2007 and 2019 were less likely to die, be hospitalized again, or experience major health complications within a year of the procedure if they were treated by a woman surgeon. Regardless of the anesthetist’s identity, the hospital where the surgery was performed, the characteristics of individual patients, or the type of surgical procedure they underwent, the results of that study, which examined over one million cases, were consistent.
Years have been dedicated by scholars to the deconstruction of the apparent pattern. Between 2011 and 2014, a study was conducted by a group at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health to determine whether treatments administered by female physicians were more beneficial for the health of patients.
The research conducted at Harvard examined more than one million patients, all of whom were Medicaid beneficiaries, who were admitted to hospitals due to general internist-treated conditions, including strokes, heart attacks, and other relatively common maladies. In comparison to patients who were tended to by male physicians, patients who were attended to by female physicians experienced a 4% decrease in the risk of mortality within 30 days and a 5% decrease in the risk of hospital readmission during the same time frame.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the current dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health and a former professor of health policy, stated to Newsweek at the time of the study’s 2016 publication that its findings suggested the necessity of additional research into the strategies employed by female physicians to enhance patient outcomes. He is also the former director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. He asserted that the male-only authors of the study were “curious as to why these differences exist; however, the reason remains unknown.”
