Researchers say that a critical mass of female anaesthesiologists and surgeons in operative teams can reduce postoperative complications
Archived version: https://archive.ph/1Bv50
Ok, but the why is missing. I honestly don’t doubt that this is the case, as any form of monoculture tends to be worse for patients. But WHAT is being done differently?
The why is a much harder question.
You’re right about it probably being true, this is not the first study to find something similar, there’s two others reported on here: Patients have better outcomes with female surgeons, studies find
It’s interesting that this study looked at the proportion of women on the surgical team (not the composition of the surgical team for any specific operation):
Overall, female surgeons performed 47,874 (6.7%) of the operations. Female anaesthesiologists treated patients in 192,144 (27%) of operations.
Hospitals with teams comprising more than 35% female surgeons and anaesthesiologists had better postoperative outcomes, the study found. Operations in such hospitals were associated with a 3% reduction in the odds of 90-day postoperative major morbidity in patients.
There’s some speculation in that first link about differences in aggression and risk-taking. But, given the relative rarity of female surgeons, it could just be a competency effect. If women are a small minority for reasons not related to competency, and 93.3% of surgeons are men, it suggests that almost half the men are in the job because a more competent women didn’t get it. Groups with more women do better simply because they didn’t discount half the talent pool quite so heavily.
For those not aware, even 3% is a pretty high reduction rate in complications.
Your theories make a lot of sense. Thanks for that. I’d love to know the sub-specialty breakdowns as well. Are the female populated teams skewing toward more toward one kind of surgery or the other? I guess it will be a while before we get that info.
Lots of variables and several potential confounders.
Could also be that modern big city hospitals are more likely to employ woman compared to some backwater rural hospital that is struggling and had all the worst patients? But they probably corrected for that?
