Gender Differences in Medical Treatment Research Paper

The results revealed that physicians, irrespective of their sex, expressed satisfaction in using online platforms in consulting patients (p-value = .260). The result implies that sexuality does not influence the experience and perception of physicians with regards to the usefulness, ease of use and learnability, interface quality, interaction quality, reliability, satisfaction and future use of online platforms as a mode for them to deliver health care services as well as their perceived quality of clinical care provided and perceived professional productivity.  

However, a significant difference was present in the ease of use and learnability among the two sexes (p-value = .047). Remarkably, female physicians scored higher in terms of the manageability, and adaptability of online platforms in consulting patients despite it being a novel system of health care delivery. Indicating that female physicians deem the system of online platforms easier to learn than those of their male counterpart. This is remarkable given the fact that men are perceived as more knowledgeable in technology, in fact, in an article written by USIP in 2019, they stated that, women, on average, have less understanding of technology, less digital skills, and less presence on online platforms, notwithstanding recent advances. Evidently, the result of the survey directly deconstructs the gender stereotype that women adapt new technology at a much slower rate than men given that female physicians expressed that it did not require them deliberate effort to learn, expand, and build on their knowledge and experience while using online platforms in practicing their profession. 

The results revealed that physicians, irrespective of their sex, expressed satisfaction in using online platforms in consulting patients (p-value = .260). The result implies that sexuality does not influence the experience and perception of physicians with regards to the usefulness, ease of use and learnability, interface quality, interaction quality, reliability, satisfaction and future use of online platforms as a mode for them to deliver health care services as well as their perceived quality of clinical care provided and perceived professional productivity.  

However, a significant difference was present in the ease of use and learnability among the two sexes (p-value = .047). Remarkably, female physicians scored higher in terms of the manageability, and adaptability of online platforms in consulting patients despite it being a novel system of health care delivery. Indicating that female physicians deem the system of online platforms easier to learn than those of their male counterpart. This is remarkable given the fact that men are perceived as more knowledgeable in technology, in fact, in an article written by USIP in 2019, they stated that, women, on average, have less understanding of technology, less digital skills, and less presence on online platforms, notwithstanding recent advances. Evidently, the result of the survey directly deconstructs the gender stereotype that women adapt new technology at a much slower rate than men given that female physicians expressed that it did not require them deliberate effort to learn, expand, and build on their knowledge and experience while using online platforms in practicing their profession. 

As mentioned before, no major significant difference was reported in terms of the sex sociodemographic profile of physicians in the overall results of the survey. However, it should be noted that, female physicians, overall, had a significantly higher score in comparison to their male counterpart. In fact, this was an also an emerging pattern in the analysis of result in the study of Xu et al. (2021) wherein they also used the Telehealth Usability Questionnaire as their survey instrument, similar to the study. Their result also revealed that female healthcare professionals had a considerably higher overall TUQ score than male healthcare professionals, parallel to the results of the study. Considering this, whilst the p-value score of the overall assessment showed no significant difference among the two sexes, it can be alluded that female physicians perceived online platforms as a more viable approach for providing medical care services to patients compared to their male colleagues. Consequently, these results may have served as the impetus for the statistics produced by Doximity in 2021, which found that female physicians adopt telemedicine at a much greater rate (25%) than male physicians.