Patient choice in a practice with men and women general practitioners

This study investigated the distribution of workload between men and women doctors in a south London practice. Of 909 attending patients aged 15 years and over, 611 were women and 48% of these consulted a woman doctor. In comparison, only 27% of the 298 men consulted a woman doctor. Twenty nine per cent of the 105 women who gave a reason for choosing a woman doctor said they had done so because of her sex. Multiple logistic regression was used to assess the relative importance of having a general preference for a woman doctor or of consulting about a problem related to sex in predicting the likelihood of a woman consulting a woman doctor. This showed that preference was 2.3 times as important as problem type in predicting this. This suggests that woman's demand for women doctors in general practice extends beyond family planning and well woman clinics. The implications of this for practice organization are discussed.