Physician Sex and Practice Pattern Differences in the Emergency Department

There is a growing literature on physician sex differences in patient care and outcomes that largely favor female physicians. Studies in the primary care setting find, for example, that female physicians spend more time in direct and indirect patient care, use more patient-centered communication, and provide more evidence-based services, although the evidence is more mixed on the provision of low-value care. But one challenge of these studies is that it is difficult in the primary care setting to disentangle the effects of patient expectations, self-selection to their treating physician, and the dyadic interaction between patient and clinician on practice patterns and outcomes. Hospital-based studies that can leverage more random assignment of patients to physicians have found that patients treated by female physicians have better outcomes, such as lower mortality and hospital readmission rates, but beyond this, little is understood about how practice patterns differ by sex in the acute care setting.