Women in the operating room have a greater influence on patient recovery; study

NEW YORK (HealthDay News)—Heading for surgery? The ratio of women to men in the operating room might influence your recovery, recent research shows.

Los hospitals in canada They had 35% or more of surgeons and anesthesiologists who were women on staff tended to produce better outcomes for patients undergoing surgery, a study found.

“Ensure a Critical mass of female anesthesiologists and surgeons In surgical teams it is not just regarding equity; it seems necessary to optimize performance“said the study’s lead author, Dra. Julie Halleta surgeon and associate scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.

His team published their findings in the May 15th edition from the “British Journal of Surgery”.

Operating rooms are notoriously male-dominated spaces: according to the study’s authors, in the Canadian province of Ontario only the 6.7% of surgeries are performed by womenand “the number of female anesthesiologists and surgeons has increased by only 5% in 10 years.”

That needs to change, Hallet’s group said, because, as in other fields, gender diversity in the workplace introduces “different skills, knowledge, experiences, beliefs, values ​​and leadership styles.”

But, Does any of that matter in terms of patient outcomes?

To find out, researchers tracked the records of almost 710,000 surgeries on adult patientsall of whom underwent major elective hospital procedures in 88 Ontario hospitals between 2009 and 2019.

On average, Women made up 28% of hospital anesthesiologists and surgeons. Women performed 6.7% of surgeries and were the attending anesthesiologists 27% of the time.

Lower rate of complications

However, hospitals where women made up 35% or more of surgeons and anesthesiologists had a 3% reduction in their odds of a “major postoperative morbidity” (complications and diseases) at 90 days among patients, compared with gender-diverse hospitals that fell below that threshold, the study found.

That 35% mark appears significant: In previous studies from the United States, Italy, Australia and Japan, postoperative outcomes also began to improve once female participation in surgery reached 35%, Hallet’s team noted.

“These results are the beginning of an important shift in understanding how diversity contributes to the quality of perioperative care,” Hallet said in a journal news release.

She believes there is still a long way to go to change what has long been a male-dominated field.

“Ensuring sexual diversity on operational teams will require an intentional effort to ensure systematic recruitment and retention policies for female physicians, structural interventions such as minimum representation on teams, and monitoring and reporting of team composition to build accountability into existing systems,” Hallet said.