Maladie coronaire de la femme

Physicians' preventive practices: more frequently performed for male patients and by female physicians

Background

We sought to analyze gender differences in General Practitioners’ (GP) preventive practices: variations according to the GP’s and the patient’s genders, separately and combined, and the homogeneity of GPs’ practices according to gender.

Methods

Fifty-two general practitioners volunteered to participate in a cross-sectional study. A sample of 70 patients (stratified by gender) aged 40–70 years was randomly chosen from each GP’s patient panel. Information extracted from the medical files was used to describe the GPs’ preventive practices for each patient: measurements of weight, waist circumference, glucose, and cholesterol; inquiry and counseling about smoking, alcohol consumption, diet, and physical activity, and dates of cervical smears and mammographies. An aggregate preventive score was calculated to assess the percentage of these practices performed by each GP for patients overall and by gender. Mixed models were used to test for gender differences.

Results

Questionnaires were collected in 2008–2009 for 71% of the 3640 patients and analyzed in June 2017.

Male patients and female GPs were associated with the most frequent performance of many types of preventive care. The aggregate preventive score was higher for male patients (OR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.47–1.75) and female GPs (OR = 1.35, 95% CI 1.05–1.73). There was no combined effect of the genders of the two protagonists. Female patients of male GPs appeared to receive preventive care least frequently and female GPs to deliver preventive care more consistently than their male colleagues.

Conclusion

Physicians need to be aware of these differences, for both patient gender and their own.

Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease: More patient gender-based differences in risk evaluation among male general practitioners

OBJECTIVE

Our objective was to analyse general practitioner (GP) cardiovascular risk assessment of patients for primary prevention while considering the gender of both the GP and the patient.

METHODS

This study consisted of an observational survey of GPs who were internship supervisors in the Paris metropolitan area. Each of 52 volunteer GPs completed a self-administered questionnaire regarding their own characteristics and randomly selected 70 patients from their patient list. Dependent variables from the patient files included the presence of information about risk factors necessary to assess the patient's cardiovascular risk according to the French scale and the Systematic COronary Risk Evaluation (SCORE) scale. Analyses used mixed logistic models with a random intercept and adjusted for patient and physician characteristics.

RESULTS

Both cardiovascular risk scales could be assessed less frequently in women than in men (odds ratio (OR) = 0.64 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.5-0.8) for the French scale and OR = 0.63 (95% CI: 0.5-0.8) for the SCORE scale). These gender differences were less substantial when the patients were seen by female (for the SCORE scale OR = 0.72 (95% CI: 0.5-1.01)) compared with male physicians (OR = 0.56 (95% CI: 0.4-0.7)). The patients who were least well assessed for cardiovascular risk were women seen by male physicians.

CONCLUSION

Even before the onset of cardiovascular disease, women patients receive less satisfactory preventative management than men do, and these differences are even more marked when the physician is a man. More attention to the influence of gender stereotypes is needed in medical training in order to combat the inequalities that they cause.