Women’s pain is taken less seriously in medical consultations, study suggests

Doctors treat men and women’s pain differently in medical visits, according to a new study that looked at emergency departments in Israeli and American hospitals. Data shows that women wait longer in the hospital to be seen when they are in pain and are less likely to receive painkillers than men. The findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Scienceson Monday (5).

Researchers believe that the way women’s pain is viewed by doctors may be different from how it is perceived in men. “Women are seen as exaggerating or hysterical, and men are seen as more stoic when they complain of pain,” says study co-author Alex Gileles-Hillel, a physician-scientist at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem, Israel. report published in Nature.

To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed more than 20,000 discharge notes from patients who presented to emergency rooms in American and Israeli hospitals with complaints of “nonspecific” pain — that is, without a clear cause.

A analysis found that upon arrival at the hospital, women were 10% less likely than men to have a recorded pain score — a value ranging from 1 to 10, given by the patient, to inform about the severity of the symptom.

After the initial assessment, women waited an average of 30 minutes longer than men to see a doctor and were less likely to receive pain medication, the study found. This trend was consistent regardless of whether the health care provider was male or female. “Women may have the same stereotypical views about women’s pain as men,” Gileles-Hillel said.

Physicians’ perception of pain

In addition to analyzing the medical notes, the researchers conducted a test to assess how 100 health care professionals perceived patients’ pain. The test participants were presented with a scenario in which different patients presented with severe back pain. They were also given clinical information about these patients, whose profiles were identical except for their gender.

Healthcare professionals participating in the test gave higher pain scores to the male patient than to the female patient.

“One of the reasons we see this in the context of pain is because there are no objective measures of pain, so the physician has to rely on the patient’s report. That allows for more bias,” Diane Hoffmann, a health law researcher at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, told Nature. From a practitioner’s perspective, this is an issue that should be highlighted during medical training, empowering practitioners to better understand pain and the potential for bias in treating the symptom.

For Gileles-Hillel, one possible solution to bring more equality in medical care between men and women is to use computer systems, such as automatic reminders, to advise the professional to prescribe painkillers when a patient reports a high pain score, regardless of gender.

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