New research suggests that women make better surgeons than men. For the study, a team at the University of Toronto compared like for like procedures performed by 3,314 surgeons at a single Canadian based hospital over an eight-year period.
This revealed that the post-operative death rages for female surgeons were 12% lower than for their male counterparts – a figure that equates to one less patient dying per every 230 operations a woman performs. (Clearly the death rates are very low!).
Previous research has also found that women doctors have, on average, slightly better outcomes than male ones and that they are less likely to be struck off.
How might we explain these disparities?
- Researchers speculate that women may be more better communicators and more cautious than men.
- However, it may also be that women face greater obstacles to entering a male-dominated profession – with the result that only the most skilled qualify as surgeons.
- You also have to question the representativeness of the Canadian study – in only one hospital in one country, you can hardly generalise from this!
Sources
The Week, 21 Oct 2017
