Hospital patients are less likely to die if they are treated by a female doctor.
Patients are in safe hands with female doctors
A study of 800,000 patients has also discovered that women were less likely to be readmitted to hospital within 30 days of discharge if they had a female physician.
Patients typically benefitted from having a female doctor, but the most significant difference was noted in women patients. Scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have theorised that the difference could be due to male doctors underestimating the seriousness of their female patients' conditions.
Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa, senior author of the study and an associate professor at UCLA, said: "What our findings indicate is that female and male physicians practice medicine differently, and these differences have a meaningful impact on patient's health outcomes.
"Further research on the underlying mechanisms linking physician gender with patient outcomes, and why the benefit of receiving the treatment from female physicians is larger for female patients, has the potential to improve patient outcomes across the board."