“Women should not have to prove their non-inferiority”
Last year The Doctors’ Association UK Co-Founder Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden raised concerns regarding an article published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine comparing first-pass intubation success of female and male physicians.
In a collaboration with doctors internationally Sammy co-authored a letter to the editor which was published in AJEM this month.
An extract her letter reads:
“Studies that seek to attribute differences in quality of care, procedural skill, or patient outcomes to innate and immutable traits like sex, gender, or race of physicians are often specious, and likely detrimental to the progress of medicine. Editorial boards that choose to publish such studies must be aware of this reality.
Such works neither expose nor dismantle entrenched systems that promote discrimination and bias. Observational studies that ‘‘prove” women deliver non-inferior, or even superior, care to men perpetuate the marginalisation of female physicians by emphasizing their ‘‘otherness.” The use of quantitative methods in this manner legitimises outdated social stereotypes.
When journals publish such studies, they send a message to our profession and to the public that the competence of female doctors is still open for debate.
We assure you, it is not.”
The full article can be read in AJEM here:
https://www.ajemjournal.com/article/S0735-6757(19)30585-6/fulltext
