A new study of heart attack patients found that women treated by male doctors were more likely to die after a heart attack than either men treated by male doctors or women treated by female doctors. The researchers also found that male physicians did a better job of treating their female heart attack patients if they worked around more female physicians.
These findings demonstrate that “we have to do better in terms of caring for women with cardiovascular disease—all of us. And male physicians could learn a thing or two from our female colleagues about how to achieve better outcomes,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in an August 6, 2018 Atlantic article.
Jha, who was not part of the research, found in a 2016 study that elderly hospitalized patients treated by female physicians were less likely to die within 30 days of admission or to be readmitted within 30 days of discharge than those cared for by male physicians.
Read Atlantic article: Women More Likely to Survive Heart Attacks If Treated by Female Doctors
Learn more
Ask the Expert: Are Female Doctors Better than Male Doctors? (Harvard Chan School Facebook Live Q&A)