By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Hospital patients are less likely to die following an operation if there are more women on the surgical team, according to a new study.
The findings, published in the British Journal of Surgery, show that operations in hospitals with a higher number of female medics were more likely to be successful.
The Canadian study follows American research, published last month, showing that hospital patients treated by women doctors were less likely to die.
It is believed that in several industries – including finance, technology, education, and law – gender- and sex diversity is important not only for equity but also because it improves the performance of teams because members bring a variety of experiences and viewpoints to their jobs.
But, until now, there was little evidence for the value of teams’ sex diversity in healthcare.
Female doctors in operating rooms remain relatively rare with the number of female anaesthesiologists and surgeons increasing by only five percent over 10 years.
The Canadian researchers looked at administrative healthcare data in Ontario where 14 million residents receive health services through a Government-administered single-payer system.
They investigated adult patients who had major elective inpatient surgeries between 2009 and 2019 to measure post-op survival.
The team analyzed 709,899 surgeries performed at 88 hospitals. The average proportion of female anaesthesiologists and surgeons per hospital per year was 28 percent.
Overall, female surgeons performed 47,874 (6.7 percent) of surgeries while female anaesthesiologists treated patients in 27 percent of op.
The study found that hospitals with more than 35 per cent female surgeons and anaesthesiologists had better postoperative outcomes.
Operations in such hospitals were associated with a three percent reduction in the odds of patients dying within 90 days of being operated on.
The research team noted that the 35 percent threshold that they observed echoed findings from research in other industries in various countries, including the United States, Italy, Australia, and Japan, that also showed better outcomes once teams had 35 percent female membership.
Study lead author Dr. Julie Hallet, of the University of Toronto, said: “These results are the start of an important shift in understanding the way in which diversity contributes to quality in perioperative care.
“Ensuring a critical mass of female anaesthesiologists and surgeons in operative teams isn’t just about equity; it seems necessary to optimize performance.
“We wanted to challenge the binary discourse of comparing female and male clinicians and rather highlight the importance of diversity as a team asset or bonus in enhancing quality care.”
She added: “Ensuring sex diversity in operative teams will require intentional effort to ensure systematic recruitment and retainment policies for female physicians, structural interventions such as minimum representation on teams, and monitoring and reporting of teams’ composition to build accountability in existing systems.”
A study by researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, published last month in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that patients had lower rates of mortality and hospital readmissions when treated by female physicians – with female patients benefitting more than their male counterparts.
The mortality rate for female patients was 8.15 percent when treated by women physicians compared to 8.38 percent when the doctor was male.
