u235

Do you think your doctor really cares about you?

That's a loaded and open sentence, with a number of inferences and interpretations. Care in the technical sense would mean "does your doctor attend to your medical needs appropriately?". Care in an empathic sense would mean "does your doctor take into account your emotional well being in how they deal with you?" There's other variants as well, but those are the two I'm most interested in.

The Times hosted a blarticle (I think I just made that word up) on the treatment of breast cancer and the gender of the doctor involved. Formed around numbers generated from a scientific study, the statement is made that female doctors were more likely to ensure that cancer patients received radiation therapy after surgery. Note that radiation therapy is essentially required as "standard treatment."

This of course made me think 'well does this mean that women make better doctors?'

81 comments later, people harped on that topic quite extensively, while others poked into the age and ethnicity of the patient and still others questioned the validity of the numbers used to support the premise of the writing. Some said "well women are more likely to treat other women with more attention". Others said "well chances are women doctors are younger doctors, so they'll me more into the latest treatments." Some said "women are more empathic and likely to listen to what their patients are feeling". But regardless of all the supposition, it's a good question, do women make better doctors?

Traditionally women are thought of as nurturing and social. Their role in primitive societies ensured that the community of the tribe thrived, as opposed to providing leadership, or defense. It might not be a big leap to say that this nurturing instinct is something that would be essential to a good doctor-patient relationship. But doctors, at least in modern society today, are also merchants who need to be careful of their time and investment in a patient. Given the cost of obtaining a medical degree, they have extreme financial constraints that preclude them from lavishing time on any one individual not in an emergency situation. Does that mean that men make better doctors because they can look at a problem un-emotionally and do what's best for all their patients?

Personally I don't care to cast judgement, in some areas I might be more inclined to work with a woman (lets say psychological issues, where I think a woman would be more understanding and tolerant) as opposed to orthopedics (where I consider it to be mostly a study in bio-physics). But perhaps that skirts the issues.

Maybe the better question to ask is: when you have a gender-specific problem, is it better to have a doctor of the same gender or not? As the moderator commented: perhaps a study of prostrate cancer would bring insight to this question.

link to article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/the-sex-of-your-surgeon-may-matter