Differential Experience With Men's and Women's Health Care Visits Between Male and Female Family Medicine Residents

Few studies have addressed whether male family medicine residents have more exposure to men's health issues than their female colleagues. Additionally, the association between panel demographics or continuity of care and the differential experience with gender-specific health care is unclear.

Between July 1, 2011, and June 30, 2014, all residents in the family medicine program had their gender, the number of women's and men's health care visits, the total number of male and female visits, and the number of visits with patients assigned to their primary care panel recorded each academic year. To determine which visits pertained to men's or women's health care, Clinical Classification Software developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) was used to map ICD9 billing codes into a useful ontology.

Female residents had significantly more women's health visits (229 versus 123) while male residents had significantly more men's health visits (89 versus 49) than colleagues of the opposite gender. There were no significant differences in continuity, the gender distribution of panels, nor the mean age of panels. However, female residents saw a greater percentage of female visits overall (60.6% versus 53.3%).

Both male and female resident physicians acquire more experience with same-gender health care visits during training. Panel demographics and continuity do not explain the differential experience. Patient preferences and/or biased scheduling selection may explain why residents accumulate same-gender health care visits at twice the rate of opposite-gender health care visits.