A new report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found a persistent gender bias among emergency room doctors when determining whether or not to provide a patient with pain medication. The study results revealed women are less likely than men to receive pain relief medication, even when they report the same levels of distress.
The study consisted of two phases. For the project’s first analysis, the research team examined a sample of over 17,000 emergency room patients at the Hadassah University Medical Center in Israel from 2015 to 2019, including information on each patient’s rating of their pain levels on a scale of zero to 10. Their analysis revealed that 38 percent of women patients received some form of pain relief medication, compared to 46 percent of male patients. This disparity was found across all pain ratings and types of pain relief medications. The authors conducted the same analysis with 4,000 emergency room records from the University of Missouri Health Care hospital, uncovering the same disparity that was present in the Israeli hospital.
The research team followed up their initial analyses with a second study at the University of Missouri hospital. The authors provided a sample of more than 100 nurses with a fake scenario regarding an emergency room patient who rated their pain level as a nine out of 10. When the hypothetical patient was a man, nurses rated his pain at an average of 8 out of 10, but when the patient was a woman, the nurses’ average rating dropped to a 7.2 out of 10. This pattern remained consistent regardless of the participating nurses’ genders.
The authors believe their findings confirm that women patients receive different, and most likely inferior, health care than men with the same concerns. They urge hospital administrators and policymakers to establish initiatives that “address psychological biases in healthcare settings to ensure fair and efficient treatment for all.”