Surgery may be the only viable solution if a doctor needs to remove a tumor or correct damage to one of your tendons. Although surgeries are inherently invasive, some of them require far more recuperation and preparation than others.
For a doctor to operate on human patients, they must complete rigorous education and also meet very strict professional standards. Surgeons work for or contract with hospitals and have access to cutting-edge facilities where they can provide both surgeries and post-operative care for their patients.
Patients often consider someone’s education or the hospital that they cooperate with when determining where to obtain medical care. They rarely consider a factor that may have a profound impact on the outcome of their treatment. For female patients, in particular, a male surgeon could lead to a far worse medical outcome.
Sex bias increases the risk of female patients
For quite some time, the medical profession has treated the male body as the standard. This approach both to the testing of procedures or medications and to the education of doctors has put female patients at a marked disadvantage when it comes to getting the best medical care possible.
A woman undergoing surgery is 16% more likely to suffer a major complication for the procedure if the doctor providing her care is male. As if that weren’t bad enough, a female patient is 32% more likely to die if the person operating on her is a male surgeon.
Female surgeons have a strong correlation with improved outcomes for female patients. Male patients, on the other hand, do not have the same degree of increased risk if they receive care from a female doctor. In fact, they were 13% less likely to die when operated on by a female surgeon.
What does this mean for those coping with surgical issues?
If you got hurt during an operation or if you lost a loved one to a surgical mistake of some kind, identifying sex bias as one of the contributing factors to the outcome might motivate you to take action. The more people that pursue justice after poor outcomes to invasive medical procedures like surgeries, the higher the standard that professionals will have to meet to continue practicing medicine.
Recognizing when a poor outcome could be a sign of medical malpractice can help those affected by surgical errors seek justice.
