I will keep an open mind when I go, and see how we vibe.

The other night minion at work suggested his doctor, who is a woman. From Ukraine originally. He said she yells at him when he isn't 1000% compliant and requires all patients to come in and submit to blood work every 3 months. Um, no. No thank you.

nicole, sounds like one of the docs at work...I used to call him Dr. Useless. I swear if I went in with an arm cut off, he'd be focused on why my blood pressure is low and ignore the missing limb!

"Statistically, it's better for everyone to have a female doctor, as they have better outcomes and better patient satisfaction."

Source?

Annie...As I was leaving, she asked me to my remove my mask, then exclaimed, "You have thin lips!". I said, "Yes...I'm white. All my family does. It's hereditary. I don't have bee-stung lips." I said, "It was nice meeting you," No comment from the doctor. ☺ ☺ ☺ All she could think abut was how hydrated I was...or wasn't. ♥

Elmer, Here is a story from Time magazine about the most recent study on outcomes between male and female surgeons, claiming women are superior. I have not gone through the study myself. I am skeptical of such a conclusions. Imagine if the study found male surgeons to be better, well that would have been unpublishable.

https://time.com/4975232/women-surgeon-surgery/

With a 4% difference in reported outcomes (which I consider within the range of potential and expected variability) and the lead investigator saying that the study's findings shouldn't be followed in choosing a surgeon, I think where it is, is as one would expect - choose a doctor based on recommendations and reputation, most certainly not on gender.

Source?

More than I can mention, frankly -- multiple studies over the last 5-10 years have shown it. Some of the better outcomes can be explained by the fact that more of the female doctors are also newer grads with more up-to-date methods and information.......but not all of the statistically relevant differences. Here's a few articles that reference some:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/well/doctors-male-female-women-men-heart.html

https://www.utoronto.ca/news/female-doctors-better-health-care-experience-gender-pay-gap-discrimination-and-depression-u-t

https://blogs.sph.harvard.edu/ashish-jha/2016/12/19/do-women-make-better-doctors-than-men/: 

Sexism is sexism, no matter by whom or for what reason or in what direction. It's like racism. Any alleged justifications are illegitimate and false to me and, more importantly, dangerous in continuing wrong headed attitudes, even those with a meaningless possible iota of truth in a narrow context, that should have gone away long ago.

Those of you women who would be incensed about and quick to dispute any study with a finding that male doctors had an edge in competency or effectiveness, no matter how slim and no matter in what context, should be equally outraged by any insinuation in the other direction. Those who aren't are really being hypocrites.

That Time story also links to a study conducted by Harvard, comparing outcomes of elderly patients treated by male vs female physicians in a hospital setting. Edit to add: this is the same study that Toronto Vet's third link refers to.

It concludes: "We found that elderly patients receiving inpatient care from female internists had 30-day lower mortality and readmission rates compared with patients cared for by male internists. This association was consistent across a variety of conditions and across patients’ severity of illness. Taken together with previous evidence(1-15) suggesting that male and female physicians may practice differently, our findings indicate that potential differences in practice patterns between male and female physicians may have important clinical implications for patient outcomes. Our findings that female internists appear to have better outcomes for inpatient care than their male peers are consistent with results from prior studies of process measures of quality. There is evidence in the primary care setting suggesting that, compared with male physicians, female physicians are more likely to practice evidence-based medicine(3) perform as well or better on standardized examinations,(16 ) and provide more patient-centered care.(12-15 ).Patients of female primary care physicians also experience fewer emergency department visits compared with patients of male primary care physicians.(38)Data from other industries suggest that men may be less deliberate in their approach to solving complex problems.(39-41) If these findings also apply to how male and female physicians approach clinical problems and decisions, these patterns of behavior may provide a plausible mechanism linking physician sex with patient outcomes."

Their study also noted that a 4% difference in risk is in fact clinically significant.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2593255 

I think that, if you want to claim sexism here, you will first have to find an alternative explanation for what appear to be statistically significant differences in outcomes.

"should be equally outraged by any insinuation in the other direction."

Peer reviewed studies with results that are statistically significant........and with results that are repeatable. Those are not insinuations, they're facts (on a statistical, not individual, level). You can write that off as sexism if you want, just as I can write off your response as sexism ;) The results are what the results are, and if they change, then they'll change. They haven't changed in the last 10 years, at least......You may not like them, but their real. I think you're just an old man yelling at clouds - you can yell at reality, but it's still gonna be there.

TV, You are surely aware that peer reviewed publications have been retracted? I am suspicious of findings that support popular opinions. Of course you could fling muck at me like you did at Elmer, name calling. The reality is, if there were any real differences in outcomes based on gender women physicians and surgeons, would be even busier than they are today. Male surgeons and physicians would only be treated by female colleagues for example. After all they would have the best window to see into the disparity.

Women in medicine face real gender based discrimination. Their positions as doctors and mothers come into conflict at a work place which was not designed to support them. Women in medicine have excelled in every way possible over the last five decades in which they have become 50 percent of practicing physicians.

These studies you cite suggest that women are either more talented at practicing medicine, or more careful at it. That kind of thinking was hogwash back in the day it was used to keep women out of the professions and it's equally nonsensical today, no matter how you choose to make your point, sheer sophistry. Only the weak need to put people down in order to make themselves feel strong.

Fun fact, peer reviewers are not paid for their time and expertise.

From Retraction Watch:

Ever curious which retracted papers have been most cited by other scientists? Below, we present the list of the 10 most highly cited retractions as of December 2020. Readers will see some familiar entries, such as the infamous Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield that originally suggested a link between autism and childhood jabs. You’ll note that several papers — including the #2 most cited paper — received more citations after they were retracted, which research has shown is an ongoing problem.

https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-leaderboard/top-10-most-highly-cited-retracted-papers/

Here is another one:

https://www.science.org/content/article/what-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty

Here is my favorite, the Sokal Hoax, for those unfamiliar, researchers purposely submitted bogus articles into peer reviewed journals, and they passed muster, quelle surprise!

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/

"The reality is, if there were any real differences in outcomes based on gender women physicians and surgeons, would be even busier than they are today."

Nonsense -- look at how scientific outcomes are being ignored, disbelieved, and even lied about today. Don't believe "if that were true, people would act differently", because these last few years have shown that not to be true. In spades. And that will be especially true when the findings go against tradition, and the expectation of superiority of men in our society.

"These studies you cite suggest that women are either more talented at practicing medicine, or more careful at it."

Not necessarily. - or, at least, not directly. Some suggest that women are better communicators and adhere to more evidence based studies, which result in them having better outcomes.. It's not at all "hogwash" to think that women do things differently than men. We know they do, and they always have (statistically speaking) - and it shouldn't be a surprise that being better at communication and being more open to new concepts are two of those things.

"Fun fact, peer reviewers are not paid for their time and expertise."

Right, and it should also not be a surprise that there is corruption and bias is scientific studies. More than I'd like, and that's why I don't rush to believe A study. But the fact that corruption and bias can exist does not mean that these studies are wrong or useless......and they aren't A study, they're repeated studies, with repeatable outcomes.

I had no idea that mentioning these results would be poking a hornet's nest -- I mean, it's not as if this is new or novel. This information has been around a long time. I guess I shouldn't underestimate the reach of patriarchal expectations.

About that patriarchy, ask yourself, if the study concluded men were the better physicians, could it, would it have been published? The answer to that question is painfully self eveident to me. Of couse no one is going to publish an article claiming men are better than women at anything substantive, so that leads me to think there was a conclusion looking for a study to support it, not a study revealing a conclusion.

Count me as old fashioned, a believer in equality between men and women.

TV, I would hope your background would have instilled the need to apply skepticism and common sense along with technical understanding in looking at such matters being discussed here, but your comments suggest such may not be the case.

I have friends and family members who are engaged in bioscience research. A boarded vet specialist included - one whose practice is sadly too busy trying to heal patients who have suffered from mistakes and what's too often misdiagnoses and malpractice of vets in general practice who think they know more than they do.

Of those I know are researchers whose work has been published in the most prominent publications. All of them know how to take findings skeptically, how to measure results that contradict common sense or personal experience, how to go slowly with potentially new insights. I hope you do too.

You've hopefully heard the phrase "correlation is not causation". Such is likely the case with this proposition but you're welcome to accept findings that defy common sense.

A more recent Canadian study found statistally similar mortality results to the Harvard study. The article addresses potential reasons.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-07-19/do-women-or-men-make-the-best-doctors

I do think you have to make more of a case than ”defies common sense” if you’re going to convincingly discredit a study.

Would they have published it if they had found men had better results? You can make a hypothetical claim but the fact is that’s not what they found so that’s a moot point.

"Would they have published it if they had found men had better results?"

Studies are published because that's what's intended as the result in the first place. There's always an outlet willing to "publish" reports but they're not of equal standing nor impact - far from it. The significance of findings can be assessed, in part, by where the actual publication takes place. In this case, the "publishing" was not in a professional journal but rather a free access online website.

The statistical difference was .004. Four tenths of one percent. Something less than overwhelming. To put it in context, if the survival rates of inoculated patients of a proposed medicine in a viral disease study were .4 % greater than for those not inoculated, the medicine would not be approved for general use.

Many different factors can account for such a small difference, such that large scale action based on such modest findings, the reason for which was not fully explained, is not warranted in my view nor in the views of many. That's the common sense part. In the article you cite is the following language.

"However, the lower death rate in the patients of female physicians was partially explained by the fact that a higher proportion of new medical grads are female and that these new grads may be more up to date,"

So if that partially explains the 4 tenths of one percent difference, what remains is little or no difference.

Jmm, I had not seen that you weighed in until an hour ago or so ago, so I took a break from baking cookies and decided to dig into the study, along with more current research. Here is what I found:

After a thorough review of “Comparison of Hospital Mortality and Readmission Rates for Medicare Patients Treated by Male vs Female Physicians”, this is a study of correlation not causality. Also, the paper admits that the data is highly confounded in that the physician’s gender is assigned in one of two ways, 1) the gender of the first physician to report on the patient, or 2) the gender of the physician that wrote the most reports on that patient’s admittance. Because there is rarely only a single physician responsible for a patient, but rather a team, the paper tried assigning the patient’s outcome to solely that shift’s hospitalist, even if that amounted to only the first few minutes of admittance. In summary, female physicians achieve better mortality and readmission rates in the Medicare data sample of only 65+ year old patients, but we still don’t know why or how.

Other statistical data may point to simple differences that account for the difference. For example, https://www.statista.com/statistics/439728/active-physicians-by-specialty-and-gender-in-the-us/ shows that most physicians are male. Also from https://www.healthline.com/health-news/women-doctors-better-patient-interactions#Similar-patient-outcomes, female physicians “comprised 39 percent of full-time faculty, 32 percent of people promoted to full professor, and 16 percent of departmental chairs in 2015”. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31279008/ reports that male physicians are much more likely to generate new medical research and hence much more likely to handle “tougher” cases. In 2013, researchers in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine reported that patients of female physicians had comparable mortality rates to patients of male physicians, and found no statistically significant differences in prescription drug expenditures, office visits, or hospital use between patients of female and male doctors.

In conclusion, statistics can only say that there is a correlation between female physicians (in the specific way that the original paper assigned patients to a specific physician’s gender) and results. That is to say that the results are barely meaningful. In fact the later paper “Variations in Processes of Care and Outcomes for Hospitalized General Medicine Patients Treated by Male vs Female Physicians” (16 July 2021) concluded that there was not a statistical difference in mortality nor readmission…. Debunking the original paper.

"The significance of findings can be assessed, in part, by where the actual publication takes place."

Indeed. The article cited in the Times was published by the British Medical Journal (vol 359, Oct 10) and is available in their archives and also on the NIH's PubMed. The article I mentioned from Harvard was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I would regard both as quite reputable sources. Certainly not vanity publications.

Further, I don't believe you understand the statistical analysis. To cite the authors of the BMJ report:

"Although the relative difference in mortality is quite modest (4%), it has potentially significant clinical implications. Tsugawa et al [authors of the Harvard paper] found a 4% relative risk reduction in mortality for patients treated by female internists, compared with those treated by male internists.6 In our primary matched analysis, we found a similar 4% relative lower likelihood of the composite outcome (adjusted odds ratio 0.96) and a 12% lower likelihood of 30 day mortality (adjusted odds ratio 0.88) among patients treated by female surgeons.

In other words, two separate studies came to similar statistical conclusions - that the relative risk is 4% (not 0.4%) lower with female doctors.

Jmm, if you look in the JAMA at the follow up articles, you will see another article published in 2021 with updated findings. The update shows that there is not statistical difference in outcomes between male and female physicians. Your article was from Feb 2017. It was based on flimsy data and had questionable results. Despite being corroborated in Canada, the lastest analyses shows no differences.

Amylou, Thank you for putting up with this side show for so long. I promise I am going back to the kitchen to bake more cookies now. Christmas music on high.

More misunderstanding from abroad, from a repeat offender.

First of all, the tenths of a percent difference I cited was from the article foodonastump linked. Here's the whole sentence:

"The study team found that 4.8% of patients treated by the female physicians died in the hospital, compared with 5.2% of the patients of male physicians. The difference was 0.47%, similar to the 0.43% difference found in the American study involving Medicare patients"

Second, you seem to not understand what PubMed is, so I'll tell you. It's like the card catalog at a library. It tracks and gives citations for published articles. Everything published or otherwise available. In doing so, no review, endorsement, acknowledgement, agreement or approval is given or implied. If a 19th or 20th century book trying to argue the validity of scientific racism (long ago discredited) were on the shelf at the Library of Congress, the catalog would list its presence. That's all PubMed does. You might unknowingly cite its presence in the Library of Congress as being some kind of validation - it isn't.

More misunderstanding from a repeat offender.

First of all, you are confusing absolute and relative risk reduction. Here's an article from, yes, the BMJ explaining the difference.

https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/learn-ebm/how-to-calculate-risk/

I read both articles in their entirety. I have cited the section which describes the relative risk reduction as 4%, which is/is clinically significant. You can continue to insist on your interpretation, but I'll take that of trained medical researchers.

I am perfectly aware of what PubMed is. I listed it because it has links. You, on the other hand, apparently are unaware of what the BMJ and JAMA are: your statement "the 'publishing'' was not in a professional journal but rather a free access online website" is simply wrong. The article is easily accessed directly via the BMJ archives and was, as I said, published in vol 359, Oct 10, 2017.

If you feel you can challenge the actual methodology of either study, then do so, as Zalco has done. Attacking the myself, the BMJ, JAMA, or the authors' concept of what is or is not statistically significant in a medical situation when you have zero training in that area is very much less than convincing.

Well this has taken a turn hasn't it? Okay I will join in. I would have ZERO issue if a study proved that men were more capable than women in any area, or vice versa. Facts are facts, one cannot be offended by facts.

I was given the advice to seek a woman doctor by a MAN, who sees a male doctor. AS well as others for various reasons. It makes sense on some level, no sense on other levels. I said it kind of off hand and it turned into a whole debate didn't it? Wow. As it stands, I am going to see a male doctor and I intend to keep a completely open mind beforehand. I am not sure I have EVER had a woman doctor before. Nurse practitioners, sure, and I find them very capable and often more attentive than MDs, but that might start a whole other tangent, so I will not go on with that point. Thanks all for your input. I hope my appointment goes well, and that he listens to me and doesn't just brush me off. I am a very compliant person and will do as he recommends. I want to be as healthy as possible.

Zalco - I hope you can take a moment from the cookie baking to clarify a couple of things.

I'm a bit confused by your most recent comment. The two papers cited in the original Time article both date from 2017 and both came up with the conclusion that there were statistically significant differences in patient outcomes comparing male to female physicians. Both speculated to some extent on why that would be so.

Looking at the 2021 article you cite, I cannot see that it actually debunks the earlier JAMA article: it still finds that: "Patients of female physicians had lower mortality than those of male physicians when adjusted for hospital and patient characteristics."

However, it looks more deeply than the earlier study into why that may be so, and adds additional factors to its analysis, "However, this difference was nonsignificant after adjustment for other physician characteristics including age, years of experience, and location of medical school training. Future research should seek to validate these findings and explore additional processes of care and behaviors of physicians that may explain differences in patient mortality associated with physician gender."

So, to my mind, the article is saying, yes, differences do exist, but the reasons may be more to do with a younger cohort of doctors than with gender per se. But it still seems to me an open question. I can't see that this paper debunks the earlier one; I think it elaborates on it, as science should do.

"differences do exist, but the reasons may be more to do with a younger cohort of doctors than with gender per se."

Several articles mentioned that, as did I in my post -- that some of the reason for better outcomes is that they're newer grads.

"Count me as old fashioned, a believer in equality between men and women."

Then you believe in a fantasy..........There is obvious inequality between men and women when it comes to work: Women are less likely to get hired, less likely to be paid as well, and less likely to get promoted than men. The amount of inequality is less than it was 50 years ago, but equality is a fantasy.

JMM,

To put it simply, the 2017 article "cherry picks" the data to get the results it wants. You can't assign outcomes to the gender of the physician to who wrote the first report, wrote the most reports, or was the hopitalist on duty at admittance, and then think that that physician gender truly was resposible for the majority of that patients care. That is what happened in the 2017 analysis. Further, the 2017 analysis only datamines Medicare data and never conducts any experiment designed to remove confounding results. Therefore, a determination of casuality is completely unfounded, as even the "discovered" correlation is unusable and best thought of as manufactured. The only take away you should be getting from the 2017 article is that if you lie to yourself, you will hear your own lies.

The 2021 paper at least uses data where the gender of the physician responisble was actually tracked. In this case, physician gender was found not to be significant. It debunks the previous paper because if the outcome difference reported in the first paper really existed, it would have shown up in the 2021 data set, but it didnt. The 2021 paper does more than "elaborate", because it actually generated a dataset where the gender of the responsible physician was tracked, instead of being assigned by some concocted rules.

"Then you believe in a fantasy..........There is obvious inequality between men and women when it comes to work"

Baloney. I hope you're restricting your comments to the foreign country your username suggests you live in. Curiously enough, I agree with you in part - there is no equality in the veterinary profession in the US these days. Where, for at least the last 20 years and perhaps longer, 75%+ of the graduates are women. Probably coinciding in part with when women were no longer discouraged from pursuing STEM studies as undergrads. I can only speak about the country I live in (the US) and I know it to be different elsewhere. Perhaps different in Canada, judging from your attitude.

I've been retired for over 10 years but in my profession and firm that, when I joined, were very much male dominated, equality and perhaps even favoritism to right prior wrongs (which most people supported) have been very much the case for many, many decades. I know the same to be true in other professions. In blue collar jobs and trades, I think things are better but change is slower.

PS - I agree with Zalco's comments above.

"Baloney. I hope you're restricting your comments to the foreign country your username suggests you live in."

Nope. For instance, there are repeatable studies (over the past 5-10 years) that show that show that the same job applications for jobs, at various levels and in various industries, are treated differently when a male vs a female name is attached to the exact same resume. Those applications with male names (or male photographs) are more likely to get offered a job or promotion, and in cases where both were offered the job, the applications with male names were offered more money. When asked subjectively, those viewing the resumes had more positive things to say about the "male" applicant than the "female" one. Those studies are probably the most well known, but certainly not the only ones.

And then there are the too frequent "discoveries" of industries (including STEM) where women are paid less, given fewer opportunities, and sexually harassed by those with power over their jobs and promotion possibilities.......It's not enough to encourage women to study a particular area or skill, the actual industry and workplaces have to be welcoming to them being there. If not, those women are bullied, underpaid, and treated dismissively at work until they've had enough and leave -- and then men look at those leaving and say that it just proves that women can't do that job (eye roll). Gender inequality is so enmeshed in society that it can't be fixed by looking at just one area (eg schooling) and pretending that fixing that area will result in solving the problem.

Those hits just keep on coming, even if the numbers are slowly improving -- the gender inequality still exists, and it's equalizing too slowly.

Amylou - I hope you have a positive experience when you visit your new PCP.

I haven't read all the studies referenced so I won't comment on them.

But as an aside note: my DDIL's first name is gender neutral and she discovered early in her finance career that it was a positive. She and my DS now have 2 little girls and they gave them gender neutral names too. Fortunately I never faced that type of discrimination as a librarian since that field tended to have more women than men and in both my university and government positions the salary scales were posted. But I can readily attest to the gender inequality that my female relatives encounter on a regular basis in their current careers.

Never one to leave hornets be, I'll throw this into the mix.

https://hbr.org/2018/08/research-having-a-black-doctor-led-black-men-to-receive-more-effective-care

"Researchers set up an experiment that randomly assigned black male patients to black or nonblack male doctors, to see whether having a doctor of their race affected patients’ decisions about preventive care. They found that black men seen by black doctors agreed to more, and more invasive, preventive services than those seen by nonblack doctors. And this effect seemed to be driven by better communication and more trust."

So race does matter when it comes to patient care. Not surprising to me as we've seen many instances of local bias when it comes to believing someone's advice. Many have shown distrust for strangers or outsiders and won't give credence to what they have to say simply because "they aren't from around here."

I'd be interested to see if women fare better with female doctors and male patients with male doctors or if it's regardless of patient gender. I suspect, given the role women play in caregiving with children of both sexes, that lines of communication may be better with female physicians for both patient genders. But I suspect those effects would easily be outweighed by simple competence of the individual.

I also wonder if part of the effect is that women pioneers into predominantly male fields had to be top notch to even dare to enter that field vs. their male counterparts to whom the option was open whether they excelled in that area or were merely competent in it.

Re: Gender discrimination. Life Ain't Fair.

At least we're looking at that. What to DO about it is really the question. Any kind of 'quotas' are hard to manage, as useful as they can be to try to reduce knee jerk hires, admissions, whatever other places gender, race or other prejudices interfere with 'equal opportunity'.

A society can overcome this. We've only just begun to recognize it

Related: I'm so interested to read about the problems some teachers of second graders are having with children returning to in-person learning after Covid's remote learning. They've missed the socialization of Kindergarten! One teacher interviewed is wearing shin guards every morning to protect her from a child who kicks her and says he hates her...then apologizes by the end of the day.

I just want to go on record as saying that I don’t hate many things. I reserve that for insurance networks. With the heat of a thousand suns. I had my mammogram in October, in the local health system that my doctor and hospital are in. When I called the number my doctor gave me to make the appointment, I gave my insurance and the fellow told me I had a couple of location options, Naturally I chose the most convenient one with the soonest available time slot. Two months later I get a bill. THAT particular mammo center was not in-network. And billing being what it is, there are several parts to the mammography billing, timed separately, so now I just got ANOTHER bill. I have called the insurance company twice and sat on hold for half an hour before I had to hang up. and it looks like there might be yet ANOTHER bill coming.

I am 100% certain that the actual delivery of health care is not what is so expensive, it is the billing and insurance offices of the various entities that deliver service to me for one procedure that have to be financed. And insurance is expensive because they go through so many iterations, network-checking, accepted-procedure-checking, to get out of paying for the bills.

Toronto vet, the world you're describing is completely different from my lifetime of experiences with colleagues, friends and their children, my children and their friends, etc. . I won't waste my time with a long list of examples. I'm going to assume that some combination of your own attitudes and perceptions, the milieu you're in or think you're exposed to, or indeed the current state of play in Canada, contribute to the differences.

To be clear, I said I believe in equality, not that we live in Paradise yet. Personally, my career in government (Executive branch) and Big Law has been smooth and free of sexism. I realize I am fortunate.

Zalco's experiences are consistent with mine. Neanderthals still lurk here and there and so too do women looking to blame others for their lack of career or life success. And also easy to find are both men and women looking to blame external factors, things and people other than themselves, for unwanted incidents and consequences of their own conduct.

Oh come on. I realize that for every study that says women get paid 80 cents on the dollar thee’s going be a list of reasons why. My wife is an HR exec for a large, international company. They run the numbers regularly and she herself will say it’s never perfect because there are so many factors.

But here’s a number that doesn’t lie: Just 38 of the top 500 companies have female CEO’s. And I believe that’s a record high. 8%, certainly a statistically significant number. Why is this number so low? Smarts? Education? Drive? Experience?

Remembering that we’re only looking for 242 more women out of this huge country, so I hope we can agree that it’s not one of the first three. So how do you explain away the fourth, other than to say that either somewhere along the way up the ladder women are not being given the same opportunities, or, there’s bias at the top rung against fully qualified women?

Is this the result of a few Neanderthals? Or is it epidemic?

My worst experiences have been with male doctors. One of the worst was when I went in with a written list of my symptoms, and as I was reading them, he kept making that circle motion with his hand like to hurry up, and eventually he just snatched the list from my hands and read it, going "this is nothing, this is nothing, this is nothing." This was all in the span of about 60 seconds so it's not like I was rambling.

Another was a former endocrinologist who gave me a thyroid biopsy on one side, and when I returned for the other side, he asked how I had healed from the first one. I said I just had some bruising for about a week, and he goes, "Oh, just tell everyone that your doctor gave you some hickeys!" The nurse and I both stared at each other in horror.

All anecdotal but I haven't had any strange experiences with women doctors. I find they listen more and aren't as quick to brush me off. I've also had great male doctors but generally speaking I prefer female.

As a woman, I curtailed my career to stay home with my children. To some people's mind this decision reflects a system wherin women do not have access to appropriate child care. To me, a woman who had access to the very best childcare possible, ranging from fully trained European nannies, overseen by my own mother, to the finest preschools in the Bay Area, I prefered to stay home with my children. That was my choice and it precluded taking high level jobs once I became a mother. I am far from the only woman in my circle, with two advanced degrees, who has made these decisions. I have friends with degrees in medicine, engineering, business, and law who have made similar tradeoffs. No regrets. Conversely, I have friends sitting at the tippy top of major SV companies and they are happy with their decisions and outcomes. For me, it's not a woman thing. It's a family thing. There are plenty of stay at home dads in my life too.

Mind you, I have one friend in that tippy top category who has had a stunningly bad experience at one particular company. She has worked at Google, FB, some famous payment company, can't remember, all in the C suite, and one company has been a Dumpster fire of sexism, to the point where she sued. I never said we lived in Paradise.

PS Upon rereading, plenty of stay at home dads, is not true. There are some stay at home dads. Pretty rare, but enough to show it is possible.

"Toronto vet, the world you're describing is completely different from my lifetime of experiences with colleagues, friends and their children, my children and their friends, etc."

So........what's your point? The plural of anecdote isn't data.

The experiences being exposed in these articles/studies are completely different from my lifetime of experiences too......However, you seem believe your experiences are representative of everyone else, regardless of what others are telling you, whereas I believe my experiences indicate I've been fortunate and privileged, and I've learned that many women have many more challenges than I do in their workplaces. I don't let my experiences negate what studies show other women are experiencing.

"The plural of anecdote isn't data."

Please keep that in mind, it will help you understand that you seem to live in a different world than many of the rest of us do. Your experiences are often not shared by others and the matters discussed in this thread seem to be another good example of that. You insist on the veracity of your views and ignore responses that suggest they contradict with experiences others have.

Im sorry AmyLou that your post went downhill and offered you no helpful advise or suggestions. I wish the posters who are battling each other had started their own thread. I also hope that you find a doc that you are comfortable with and in whom you can have confidence. For what its worth I have had male and female drs and I think it depends more on the individual than it does on their sex as far as what kind of clinician they are. Please let us know how your search goes.

Zalco, while your choice is far from unique it’s also far from the rule. There are plenty of career driven women who make work their top priority. Just like there are plenty of men who don’t. I realize that you are not saying everything is perfect, but I’m reading some suggestions here that bias is an anomaly.

"You insist on the veracity of your views and ignore responses that suggest they contradict with experiences others have."

I have seldom seen a better example of someone entirely missing the point.  Your statement applies far more to you than to Toronto vet.  She is not the one claiming that her own or her family's experiences are definitive.

"Your statement applies far more to you than to Toronto vet."

I don't think so, you're reading selectively. Zalco is a fellow professional, lives in my area, read her comments.

TV's attitude isn't so, she suggests that the world everywhere was and had to be the same as hers. And funny enough, at least one of the studies (with marginal and questionable "findings") took place assessing patients in Canada, not in the US.

She's in a country abroad with practices, traditions, and attitudes very different from where 90+ percent of this forum's participants live. As are you.

amylou321,

Your experience is pretty standard in my area. Many doctor's have contracts with certain insurance companies and must accept their patients but may not be taking new patients without insurance or non-contracted insurance company patients.

My PCP recently retired and the other doctor from that practice who I also saw, moved to a new practice. It was very difficult to get added as a new patient even though I had been seeing that doctor for years. It is impossible to get an appointment with this new practice.

I have been researching concierge PCP's but they are expensive.

Geeze guys....how 'bout giving it a rest? You have taken amylou's thread far off track and there is an awful lot of pettiness and needing to have the last word fueling the discussion now.

Observations and opinions are always going to vary based on life experience and location. But that does not make one viewpoint any more valid than another.

You have all made your opinions known and it is unlikely any of you are going to change anyone else's opinion so why not just bow out of the discussion and stop all this childishness? It is becoming very irritating and so doggone predictable. Especially from certain sources.

Good idea.

"Observations and opinions are always going to vary based on life experience and location. But that does not make one viewpoint any more valid than another."

But mine weren't "observations and opinions" but repeatable studies showing statistically significant results. As I said - data, not anecdotes. The fact that I've read the studies and others haven't doesn't make the studies just my "opinion".