Do women make better doctors than men?

One of the first studies to examine the issue was published in 2017 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine by Yusuke Tsugawa of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues based in Boston. The authors analysed the medical records of around 1.5m older adults who had been hospitalised in America between 2011 and 2014. They found that patients whose primary treatment had been performed by a female doctor were roughly 4% less likely to die, and 4% less likely to be readmitted to hospital in the following 30 days, than those whose primary doctor was a man. The beneficial effect on mortality is comparable to that of being hospitalised in 2013 rather than 2003, with all the accompanying improvements in treatments and technology.