30 Times Ridiculously Unfair Treatment From Doctors Made Women Want To Scream

When researchers set out to investigate whether there is sex bias in pain management, they didn’t just look at a couple of hundred, or a few thousand case studies. They dissected data from the hospital discharge notes of more than 21,000 people with pain complaints in the US and Israeli healthcare systems.

The extensive study was carried out by experts from several Israeli universities, and an international team of researchers. The findings point to blatant bias against female patients, and show that they "are consistently less likely to receive pain medication prescriptions compared to male patients with similar complaints."

"The study revealed that female patients are prescribed fewer pain relief medications than male patients, even after considering the levels of pain reported and other variables such as age, medical history, and the type of complaint," reads a press release from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "This suggests a systemic issue where women's pain may not be taken as seriously or treated as aggressively as men's pain."

It further calls for "urgent policy interventions and training for healthcare professionals to address and counteract these biases, ensuring equal pain treatment for all patients."

The researchers believe misconceptions about women's pain are to blame. “Previous work has shown that individuals tend to perceive females’ pain as less intense than that of males. This perception bias has in turn been explained by a gender–pain exaggeration bias: People view females as more emotional and assume that they overreport their experienced pain compared to males," they said.

“The literature has suggested additional stereotypes that may also explain why female patients receive less pain treatment, such as the perception of females as more capable of physically tolerating pain than males."

A British survey of more than 110 000 women found that 50% of them felt that their pain was disregarded or overlooked. And many said their suffering (particularly related to menstrual health) was dismissed as "a natural aspect of being a woman" and therefore didn't warrant medical attention.

"In the same survey women have reported being left unattended to bleed for hours after miscarriage and sent home with the advice of taking paracetamol, whereas others reported severe pain sustained for years due to endometriosis or fibroids but were told 'it was all in their head'," notes a research paper, which cited the survey.

Another study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, revealed that "young female patients (aged 18–55 years) who presented to emergency departments with chest pain had a 29% longer wait time for potential heart attack evaluation compared with their male counterparts."

Women of color were forced to wait even longer! And were less likely to be prescribed the medication they needed.

The lead researcher of the Israeli study has warned that sex bias in medicine can have major consequences for female patients.

"Our research reveals a troubling bias in how women's pain is perceived and treated in emergency care settings," said Professor Choshen-Hillel. "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."