Gender Dyads: Gender Affects Patients

Many studies have concluded that a physicians’ gender affects patients. Two sets of therapeutic relations exist in the doctor-patient relationship— the paternalistic model and the informative model (Roter and Hall 1998). In the paternalistic model the practitioner is an expert who conveys technical information sufficient for patients to select the medical intervention deemed more appropriate for themselves. On the other hand, the informative model is that in which the doctor assists patients with the interpretation and understanding of the information within their social, emotional, and cultural context.

Several studies examined the practice styles implemented by both female and male physicians. In one of the studies, the researchers filmed

Two of these studies, investigated differences between gender-dyads and the use of patient centered care (PCC). Both of these agree that the psychosocial pattern is more common in consultations with female patients and female physicians, while it occurs less often when a male patient visits a female doctor (Van den Brink-Muinen et al. 2002). Meaning that the amount of PCC observed is the greatest when there exists a gender concordance between female patients and female physicians (Bertakis et al. 2012). In addition, Sandhu et al. (2009) demonstrated that aside from doctor-patient gender congruence eliciting different practice styles, gender dyads influence the type of patient agendas elicited, the talk content, nonverbal communication, the exhibition of power, and consultation length; factors that affect patient satisfaction. In this study like the others above, opposite sex dyads were the least patient-centred, the least calm, and in which doctors are rated the worst. Strikingly, an important characteristic of female doctors and male patient dyads is that male patients use them as an opportunity to address their emotional agenda more than they do if the doctor is male. Similar to the other studies, in female to female dyads, there is more psychosocial talk with the most encouraging communication style, relative ease in interactions, and the longest consultations in which more talk occurs than in any other dyad combination. However, is where the more biomedical talk about medical and therapeutic issues is most present (Sandhu et al.