Can we say that women doctors are just better for everyone?

Recently, my friend had a patient. The guy, patient with a history of autoimmune disease came in with pain, anxiety, and tachycardia.  She walked in and felt the psychosomatic overlay. What was her intervention? Meds? Psych? Nope. She closed the door, held his hand, pulled out her mom self and let him tell her for 15 long minutes about his hard life. The nurse watched the monitor as his heart rate dropped in a linear fashion.  Better than beta blocker or benzos. Took freaking forever. But no labs, no consults, discharged 45 minutes later completely happy with his care. Not sure know many of our male colleagues could, or would even attempt, that Jedi trick. Recently, JAMA Internal Medicine published an article “Comparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates for Medicare Patients Treated by Male vs. Female Physicians” by Tsugawa and colleagues.  The article, picked up by many popular news sources like the Atlantic and NPR, looked at 30-day mortality and readmission rates for elderly hospitalized patients with Medicare.  The 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.  Over 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. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your on...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Emergency Source Type: blogs