• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Women Less Likely Than Men To Get Pain Relief In The ER – And They Wait Longer

August 9, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Women wait longer than men to receive medical care in hospital emergency departments and are less likely to receive pain medication for the same complaints, a study has found. The research reveals a troubling and “significant” sex bias in how medical staff perceive a patient’s pain.

Advertisement

Gender and sex inequality in medicine is a well-documented phenomenon. It goes right back to the research that all of our medical treatments are based on – much of our historical anatomical knowledge was gleaned by dissecting only male bodies, and females continue to be underrepresented in preclinical and clinical trials.  

Numerous studies have found that this bias persists throughout the medical establishment, leading to misdiagnoses and inappropriate treatment for women when their medical issues don’t fit preconceived male-biased patterns, and conditions that primarily or exclusively affect female bodies being under-researched. 

Now there’s a new strand of evidence to add to this disheartening picture. A team of scientists from the US and Israel studied medical records pertaining to more than 21,000 patients who had attended hospital emergency departments complaining of pain. The picture that emerged was one of notable sex-based disparities in treatment. 

Women were 10 percent less likely than men to have a recorded pain score – the number from one to 10 that helps patients give medical staff an indication of pain severity. The women also had to wait in the department for an average of 30 minutes longer than the men; and even when adjusting for pain scores and other variables, women were less likely than men to be prescribed painkillers.

In short, as co-author Dr Alex Gileles-Hillel put it to Nature News, “Women are viewed as exaggerating or hysterical and men are viewed as more stoic when they complain of pain.”

Advertisement

These same trends existed regardless of the gender of the nurse or doctor treating the patient. Some previous studies have found that female doctors and surgeons produce better outcomes for patients, but these findings suggest that preconceptions about female pain are so deeply ingrained that they color medics’ judgment, regardless of their own gender. 

In the second part of the study, the authors performed a controlled experiment with 109 nurses using clinical vignettes, which are case studies that are used as part of clinical training. This again revealed that pain was deemed less intense when the nurses were told that the patient in the scenario was female. 

“Our research reveals a troubling bias in how women’s pain is perceived and treated in emergency care settings,” said corresponding author Professor Shoham Choshen-Hillel, in a statement emailed to IFLScience. “This under-treatment of female patients’ pain could have serious implications for women’s health outcomes, potentially leading to longer recovery times, complications, or chronic pain conditions.”

The authors are calling for training to help healthcare workers recognize and address their sex biases. One option that Dr Gileles-Hillel suggested to Nature News could be a computerized alert that prompts doctors to prescribe pain relief whenever a patient – of any gender – reports a high enough pain score.

Advertisement

The message from the findings is clear: hospitals should take another look at the pain management protocols to ensure that all patients who come through their doors receive equal access to care.

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Bolivian president calls for global debt relief for poor countries
  2. Five Seasons Ventures pulls in €180M fund to tackle human health and climate via FoodTech
  3. Humanity’s Journey To A Metal-Rich Asteroid Launches Today. Here’s How To Watch
  4. Ancient DNA Reveals People Caught Leprosy From Adorable Woodland Critters In Medieval England

Source Link: Women Less Likely Than Men To Get Pain Relief In The ER – And They Wait Longer

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • “Lizard Shampoo” And Pagan Texts Suggest “Dark Age” Medicine Wasn’t So Dark After All
  • Japanese Macaques May Mourn Their Dead – As Long As They’re Not Maggot-Infested
  • This Is What You’d Hear If You Listened To Voyager’s Golden Record NASA Sent To Interstellar Space
  • RFK Jr’s New Vaccine Advisors Just Recommended Fall Flu Vaccines – But There’s A Catch
  • Controversial World-First Project To Create Human DNA From Scratch Takes First Steps
  • Humans Weren’t The First Species To Travel Around The Moon. They Lost This Race To An Unexpected Animal
  • When You Hack A Shark, You’re Exploiting A Glitch Billions Of Years In The Making
  • Wellness Whales, A New Blood Type, And A DJ Set From Space
  • Hate Flying Ants? We Used To Have Ones The Size Of Hummingbirds
  • ‘Tis The Season To See Titan Cast A Shadow On Saturn – Especially If You Are In America
  • World’s Bravest Vets Put Full Metal Dental Crown On A Bear For The First Time
  • “Spider Rain”: The Bizarre Phenomenon That’ll Send Arachnophobes Into A Spin
  • Scientists Gave Mice A Human “Language Gene” And Something Curious Unfolded
  • Surveillance Of People Is More “Pervasive And Normalised” Than Previously Thought, Endangering Our Privacy
  • US Sees 90 Percent Drop In Heart Attack Deaths Over Last 50 Years
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version