Doctors treat men and women differently when it comes to pain - women in the hospital have to wait longer to be seen, and receive less frequent pain relievers than men, as a study shows that pain is perceived and treated in male and female patients.

The results, published on August 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , emphasize how unconscious prejudices can influence our perception of the pain experiences of others.

"Women are considered exaggerating or hysterical and men are stoic when they complain about pain," says co-author Alex Gileles-Hillel, a doctor and scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

female pain minimized

Gileles-Hillel and his colleagues examined the extent of this prejudice in emergency rooms of Israeli and American hospitals. They analyzed more than 20,000 discharge notes of patients who came in with "unspecific" pain problems - such as headaches - without clearly recognizable cause.

The analysis showed that when they arrive in the hospital, women had 10% less likely to have a recorded pain scale from 1 to 10, which is awarded by the patient and provides doctors to the pain intensity. According to the first assessment, women waited an average of 30 minutes longer than men to see a doctor, and were less common than men. This trend was independent of the nurse or doctor's gender. "Women can have the same stereotypical views of the pain of women like men," says Gileles-Hillel.

The researchers also tested how 100 health specialists perceived the pain of patients. The participants were introduced to a scenario of a patient with severe back pain and the patient's previous clinical information was given. The patient profiles were identical except for gender. The participants consistently gave higher pain points for the male patient than for the female

"One of the reasons why we see this in the pain area is that there are no objective measurements for pain, so the doctor has to rely on the patient's reports. This enables more prejudices," says Diane Hoffmann, a health research researcher at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. It adds that the topic should be emphasized during medical training in order to equip doctors with a better understanding of pain and the potential for prejudice during treatment.

Another immediate solution that Gileles-Hillel wants to test is to check whether the use of computer systems is sufficient to produce memories to improve fairness-for example, a warning could advise a doctor to prescribe painkillers if a patient has reported a high pain scale regardless of gender. "Doctors are not aware of these prejudices," he says. "To raise awareness is a solution."