Why you want your surgeon to be a woman

WOMEn surgeons have lower death r ates t han m en, a s tudy has discovered.

Female surgeons were thought to be more skilled, better at following guidelines and superior at communicating with other staff, researchers said.

They found patients operated on by w omen w ere 1 2 p er c ent l ess l ikely to die. The study compared outcomes for patients undergoing one of 25 surgical procedures by a female surgeon with those having the same operation from a man.

a total of 104,630 patients and 3,314surgeons were involvedand it took place at a hospital inOntario,canada,between2007 and 2015. The results showed women surgeons had slightly lower death rates than men, with their patients 12 per cent less likely to die.

This d ifference w as v ery s mall – with only one extra death for every 230 procedures at the hands of male surgeons compared with women.

and patients treated by men were no more likely to suffer further complications or need to be admitted back to hospital.

nonetheless, the findings do backup previous studies which had f ound w omen d octors w ere far less likely to be struck off than male colleagues. The authors from the University of Toronto speculated that the care of female surgeons was more ‘patient centred’, in line with guidelines ’and involves‘superior communication ’.

There is also evidence that they t ake f ewer r isks t han m en and are more inclined to ask for help from colleagues if things go wrong. Professor clare Marx, the former president of the royal college of surgeons and Professor Derek alderson, the current president, said the findings would help dispel ‘an unconscious bias’ among patients – and staff – against women doctors. ‘This study helps to combat these lingering biases by confirming the safety, skill, and expertise of women surgeons relative to their male colleagues,’ they wrote in an editorial accompanying the study in the BMJ.

But they urged patients not to worry about the sex of their surgeon. T hey a dded t hey w ere not ‘convinced that the sex of the surgeon will emerge as an important determinant of a good o utcome f or p atients h aving surgery’.

research in 2015 found that female doctors were two and a half times less likely to be struck of for sued for negligence than m en. E xperts h ave s peculated t hat w omen d octors w ork harder because they feel obliged to prove themselves.

The nHs does not publish the numbers of male and female surgeons practising. Butfigures s how t hat w omen m ake up just 11 per cent of consultant surgeons – the most senior roles.

Experts say women are less inclined to become surgeons because t hey a re l ess c onfident they will succeed.

It takes ten years to qualify as a surgeon and at least six more to become a consultant.

research by the University of Exeter in 2013 also found women believed surgery was a ‘stereotypically m asculine c areer’.