You can get world-class care from a doctor regardless of gender. Certainly, you do not want to stereotype any medical professional. You need to decide how you feel about going to them based on your own experiences with them.
However, you may have wondered about the big-picture trends. If you want optimal care, you want a great outcome and you want to avoid mistakes that may count as medical malpractice, does it matter if your doctor is a man or a woman?
It may. According to some reports, the patients of female doctors “tend to fare better.” This is true when the patients themselves are both male and female. That implies that the bias is not that doctors provide better care to those of the same gender. It’s just that female doctors tend to have better outcomes no matter who they treat.
One potential reason why is that reports also claim female doctors are better at listening than male doctors. If they really slow down and listen to their patients, do they hear key facts and accounts that male doctors may miss? Do they understand what the patient needs in a deeper way? It may take them longer to see each patient if they spend more of their time just listening to them, but that may be worth it if it means that the patients get better care.
Of course, you can also suffer from mistakes that your doctor makes, regardless of gender. If you do, make sure you are well aware of the legal options that you have at your disposal.
