30 hours ago The sex difference (male > female) was greater for nurses than physicians. ... whereas it is more acceptable for a woman to report that she is in pain (Robinson et al ... study, different healthcare professions assess and treat pain differently depending on the patients’ demographics (Breuer et al., 2010). Physicians and nurses, who also were ... >> Go To The Portal
When examining those factors, it is found that women report pain more frequently, and have a lower threshold for pain than men. They usually complain more of muscle-skeletal, neuropathic, electrical shock and temperature-related pain, but respond better to opioids, in particular κ receptor-binding opioids. Introducción:
Literature data strongly suggest that men and women differ in their responses to pain: they are more variable in women than men, with increased pain sensitivity and many more painful diseases commonly rep … There is much evidence to suggest that gender is an important factor in the modulation of pain.
Gender differences in pharmacological therapy and non-pharmacological pain interventions have also been reported, but these effects appear to depend on the treatment type and characteristics.
The study indicates that more females than males had ever been attended to by a male nurse for the period considered by the study, and females described male nurses as polite and courteous and were comfortable with their treatment.
The phenomena Kristen Swanson addressed reflects the process of nursing practice which could be best applied to this study where caring was the pivot upon which male and female nursing care processes were mirrored (viewed) in relation to patient’s satisfaction of care provided by male or female nurses.
"Human studies more reliably show that men have higher pain thresholds than women, and some show that men have a higher pain tolerance as well," Graham adds.
Generally, there was no significant difference between the two genders in their view of the nursing code of professional conduct. However, male students regarded the viewpoint of “refusing benefits in attempt to uphold the image of nurses and the profession,” as more important than female students.
Higher PI levels were associated with more urgent (higher priority) ESI levels by female nurses, yet less urgent ESI levels by male nurses. In contrast, male patients with high RR received more urgent ESI levels by male nurses, while nurse gender did not influence ESI assignments for female patients.
In the workplace and, perhaps most importantly both intra- and interprofessionally, nurses are judged on their skills, knowledge, and performance, without regard to gender. Today, male and female nurses are treated the same.
Although women make up a more significant workforce share, male nurses earn more than their female counterparts. Male RN's make an average of $5,000 more per year than female RN's. Men entering the field will have the confidence to know that they can earn good money. Also, they know that the career is stable.
According to "Gender biases in estimation of others' pain," when male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, observers viewed female patients' pain as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus medication as compared to men's pain, exposing a significant patient gender bias that could lead to disparities in treatments.
Overall, the study found that female patients were perceived to be in less pain than the male patients who reported, and exhibited, the same intensity of pain.
The ability to analyze observers' perceptions relative to these two ground truth measures of the patients' pain in the videos allowed the researchers to measure bias more accurately , Losin explained. That is because bias could be defined as different ratings for male and female patients despite the same level of responses.
Researchers found that when male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, observers viewed female patients' pain as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus medication as compared to men's pain, exposing a significant patient gender bias that could lead to disparities in treatments.
A new study suggests that when men and women express the same amount of pain, women's pain is considered less intense based on gender stereotypes. Researchers found that when male and female patients expressed the same amount of pain, observers viewed female patients' pain as less intense and more likely to benefit from psychotherapy versus ...
Womens' pain not taken as seriously as mens' pain: A new study suggests that when men and women express the same amount of pain, women's pain is considered less intense based on gender stereotypes. -- ScienceDaily. Science News. from research organizations. 1.
Both men and women interpreted women's pain to be less intense. The idea to study disparities in the perception of pain based on a patient's gender was derived from previous research, Losin said, that found women are often prescribed less treatment than men and wait longer to receive that treatment as well.
The search identified 47 separate diagnostic categories for which there were more than 40 pain reports for each gender. The sample included more than 11,000 individual adult patients, of which 56 percent were women and 51 percent of them white. The researchers were able to further analyze these 47 categories by condensing them into 16 disease clusters: “musculoskeletal and connective tissue” (in which the biggest gender differences in reported pain intensity were observed), “circulatory” and so forth.
Using a novel database designed especially for research, the Stanford scientists examined more than 160,000 pain scores reported for more than 72,000 adult patients. From these, they extracted cases where disease-associated pain was first reported, and then stratified these findings by disease and gender.
Butte’s team selected only adult records and looked for gender-related differences in pain intensity as reported on 1-to-10 scales, in which a zero stands for “no pain” and 10 for “worst imaginable.” Their search algorithm combed through de-identified EMR data for more than 72,000 patients, and came up with more than 160,000 instances, ranging across some 250 different disease categories, in which a pain score had been reported.
Women report more-intense pain than men in virtually every disease category, according to Stanford University School of Medicine investigators who mined a huge collection of electronic medical records to establish the broad gender difference to a high level of statistical significance.
While the overall results tended to confirm previous clinical findings — for example, that female fibromyalgia or migraine patients report more pain than their male counterparts — the search also unearthed previously unreported gender differences in pain intensity for particular diseases, for example acute sinusitis and “cervical spine disorders,” more commonly known as neck pain.
Budu, H.I., Abalo, E.M., Bam, V.B. et al. “I prefer a male nurse to a female nurse”: patients’ preference for, and satisfaction with nursing care provided by male nurses at the Komfo Anokye teaching hospital. BMC Nurs 18, 47 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0369-4
Perhaps, the fact that male nurses are often stereotyped as “He-Man” and/or are “pressurized” by society due to the feminine orientation attached to nursing [ 15 , 16 ], leaves a large room for male nurses to prove themselves as being worthy of their profession. Thus, their actions and activities during practice are key to their sustenance and continuance in the profession [ 24, 25, 34, 38, 39 ]. Relating this to Swanson’s [ 45] middle-range theory which describes nursing actions as key to aiding positive patient outcomes [ 45, 46 ], restores [ 47] and unifies both patient and nurse [ 48] outcomes, male nurses have a lot to give if the negative label they are often associated with is to be abated. Although male nurses were praised for their professionalism and thus, having larger proportions of them will boost Ghana’s health sector, the unfavourable view associated with males being in the nursing profession as described previously [ 15, 16 ], could potentially hinder their increased percentage in the profession [ 10, 19] just as witnessed by the KATH 2016/17 records [ 31 ].
In Ghana, nursing as a profession was introduced as a subset of colonialism and the introduction of Christianity in the nineteenth century [ 28 ]. The people of Ghana, then Gold Coast, had trouble accepting the profession especially on the part of women owing to cultural differences. Hence, boys who were school leavers, otherwise termed “bush-boys”, were the ones who underwent training as nurses [ 29 ]. However, as the years went by, women became more welcoming to the professions (nursing and midwifery) and therefore got trained [ 28 ]. Even though Ghana’s health sector is faced with serious shortage of human resources [ 30 ], the few available trained nurses, especially females, leave the country in droves in search of ‘greener pastures’ abroad, particularly the US and UK, with serious consequence on health delivery in Ghana [ 21 ].
Specifically, male nurses are marginalised, and prevented from performing certain personal and intimate care procedures such as electrocardiograms, catheterization and Papanicolaou smears, for female patients, as well as working in the labour and delivery units ( [ 10, 20 ]-p. 61, [ 26, 27 ]).
Nursing until the nineteenth century was not an activity thought to demand skill, training or commanded respect [ 1 ]. The profession was envisaged as a self-conscious occupation where anyone could freely describe themselves as ‘nurses’ and call what they did as nursing [ 2 ].
Although marital status, religious affiliation and educational level were the significant predictors of patients’ preference for, and satisfaction with care provided by male nurses, the effect of the other variables should not be overlooked. The finding disproves assertions on the negative effect of religion on male nurses. It is recommended that public awareness be created on the role of male nurses in the healthcare delivery system to promote acceptance of gender diversity in the nursing profession.
Stokowski LA. Just call us nurses: Men in nursing. Medscape. 2012; August.