Sexist doctors are putting their lives at risk

After a brief examination, the middle-aged male gynaecologist sat Paula Brunt down and delivered his diagnosis.

Then 39, Paula had been suffering from chronic pain in her abdomen for 18 months, as well as heavy bleeding and an exhaustion that sometimes overwhelmed her.

Later, she would discover that these symptoms were being caused by a cancerous tumour on one of her ovaries.

But at this appointment, there was no sense of alarm or urgency.

‘There is a history of cancer in my family, so I told him this, but he didn’t carry out any tests,’ says Paula, now 48. ‘He said it was most probably the menopause and there was nothing he could do. He was very matter of fact. It seemed as if he was telling me I had a cold.’

A few months later, Paula’s condition worsened and she went back, only to be told the same again. ‘I was so unwell, I knew something wasn’t right,’ she recalls. ‘It was impacting on all areas of my life.’ Eventually, it was her GP — a woman — who made an emergency appointment for a scan.

‘She was fabulous,’ says Paula, adding: ‘I could tell by the female sonographer’s face that something wasn’t right. I was a slim size 8 and looked nine months’ pregnant.’

Once her tumour was spotted, Paula underwent major surgery to have it removed, followed by a hysterectomy. 

Her recovery from this has been slow and, seven years on, she’s still in pain.

Of course, doctors are not infallible. It’s possible that Paula was simply unlucky. But what concerns her is that she believes diagnosis took so long because she is a woman. ‘If I had been listened to, if my condition wasn’t just put down to “women’s problems”, then I believe my cancer would’ve been picked up sooner and I wouldn’t have had to have a hysterectomy, which made me really ill,’ she says. ‘I’ve still not recovered from it.’

While Paula complained to the hospital, she says she never received a proper explanation nor the apology she feels she was owed.

And she is not alone in claiming the severity of her symptoms were overlooked because of her sex.

Indeed, there is a growing number who are convinced there’s a deep-rooted sexism endemic among doctors and consultants, which means women’s symptoms are less likely to be taken seriously, with lives being put at risk in some cases.

Certainly, there’s a mounting body of evidence that women’s complaints are more likely to be taken less seriously.

Wendy Wheat (pictured), 46, saw numerous doctors across five years before being diagnosed with liver disease

One U.S. study in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine showed that when women and men present the same severity of abdominal pain in A&E, men wait an average of 49 minutes before being treated, while the average for women is 65 minutes.

The study’s authors — both male and female —concluded that ‘despite having similar pain scores, women are less likely to receive analgesic treatment than men, particularly opiates, and wait longer for their medications’. They found ‘gender bias’ could be a factor and recommended ‘standardised protocols’ to help solve the problem.

Clinical studies have also found that doctors are more likely to think women’s pain is caused by emotional issues, rather than physical ones, even despite tests that show the pain is real.

Another study, Women With Pain, found that women with chronic pain conditions are more likely to be wrongly diagnosed as having mental health problems than men. British research also shows that women are 50 times more likely to be wrongly diagnosed after a heart attack.

Meanwhile, a review in The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics noted a study which found that male patients undergoing a coronary artery bypass received strong painkillers more often than female patients.

Women were more likely to be given sedatives, ‘suggesting that female patients were more often perceived as anxious, rather than in pain’, according to the review’s female authors.

Of course, some male patients will come away feeling that they have not received the best treatment or been listened to by their doctors.

But many women are left with the sense that their problems have been dismissed purely because of gender bias.

Writer Julia Buckley, 36, has spent most of her adult life trying to find out what was causing her chronic pain.

She suffers from a rare genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects the body’s connective tissues and causes pain, tiredness and dizziness. While her symptoms started in her teens, she wasn’t diagnosed until she was 31.

She has now written a book, Heal Me: In Search Of A Cure, exploring why it took so long to get a diagnosis, which she is convinced is down to inherent sexism in the healthcare system.

‘Doctors are far more likely to blame female pain on psychological causes,’ she says. ‘I have been seeing doctors since my teenage years with various pain-related problems. 

‘Even after I was diagnosed with a genetic condition that is known for causing chronic pain, I saw an endocrinologist who told me: “There’s nothing wrong with you, if you only stopped worrying you’d be absolutely fine.”

‘Since ancient Greek times, women have been diagnosed as “hysterical” — it is still going on and it makes me furious.

‘Of course, not all doctors are the same. But, often, if a woman cries in front of their GP, they’ll think she’s not coping, but if a man cries, they think: “This must be serious.”

Wendy (pictured) lost her hair after receiving treatment for the wrong diagnosis 

‘Part of the problem is down to the training doctors get. Sexism is a societal issue, but doctors need to be made aware of it. Other companies make their employees aware of implicit biases, such as sexism, and male and female doctors should get that training. They need to be able to hear what their patients are telling them.’

And yet, there are many examples where this simply doesn’t happen, with tragic consequences in some cases.

At an inquest last year into the death of 23-year-old Charlotte Foster, her mother Cecilia told the hearing that Charlotte’s GP ‘did not seem to listen to her’.

Charlotte went into cardiac arrest and died after suffering deep vein thrombosis caused by the contraceptive pill. Yet three weeks before her death, her GP had told her all she needed was a ‘spa day’.

Charlotte, a business studies graduate from Newport, Shropshire, had displayed classic symptoms of pulmonary embolism — pain in her chest, back pain and difficulty taking a deep breath.

But her mother told the inquest Charlotte’s GP Sunil Simon ‘told her her problem was mechanical and that she should go for a massage or a spa day’.

‘Charlotte was very angry after the consultation. She was upset that no follow-up investigations had been arranged.’

The coroner referred her GP to the General Medical Council, which issued Dr Simon with a formal warning. The GMC said he failed to consider a link between Charlotte’s ‘symptoms and the contraceptive medication’.

Helen Greenwood (pictured), 43, almost died following GP advice after a heart attack

Wendy Wheat, 46, an administrator is another who is convinced there’s an insidious sexism running through the medical profession that almost cost her her life.

The mother-of-two, from Nottingham, saw countless doctors and consultants, both male and female, over five years, until she was finally diagnosed with liver disease in 2012. Before this, she was told she was suffering from various conditions, including thyroid problems and chronic fatigue.

‘I never fully recovered from a serious bout of flu in 2004. I was exhausted all the time,’ she says. ‘My male doctor told me it was my thyroid and gave me some medication, but it got worse. I used to be really sociable, but all I wanted to do was curl up in bed.’

In 2009, Wendy went to see a male hormone specialist who told her she had chronic fatigue.

But as time went on, she started to suffer from extreme itchiness of the feet — a known indicator of some liver diseases — which became so bad that she made her feet bleed in her desperate attempts to stop the itching.

‘I wanted to rip my feet off,’ she says. ‘Driving was impossible. ‘I was sent to a dermatologist, who said it was trench foot and then keratoma [a benign skin tumour that mainly affects horses].’

Wendy was given more medication, but within weeks of taking it, she had lost all of her long, curly, dark hair.

‘Obviously, as a woman in my 30s, this was devastating.’

It was not until 2012 that Wendy saw a female GP, who performed a liver function test. She was then sent to a consultant who diagnosed primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), a serious, long-term liver disease affecting the bile ducts.

‘I remember going to see my usual male GP when I lost my hair and he told me I just had to live with it.

‘He made me feel like I was going crazy. But I felt suicidal and wanted someone to listen to me. I think if I were a man, I would’ve been taken more seriously. I feel like I was being treated as a silly woman, who was being vain for worrying about her hair.

‘When I was diagnosed with PBC, I felt relieved that I finally had an answer. After a few months of treatment, my hair grew back, the itchiness went and my fatigue was a lot better.’

Helen (pictured with her son William) was told she was lucky to be alive after she ignored her GP and called 999

Wendy adds: ‘As PBC mainly affects women, it’s not on the radar — it’s dismissed as a women’s disease.’

It is perhaps an indication of the current mindset in the medical profession that Robert Mitchell-Thain, an education officer for the PBC Foundation, commented that women should be more assertive when they see their doctors.

‘Sometimes, women do not always express themselves, meaning they are diagnosed too late because they’re not empowered enough to advocate for themselves,’ he says.

But surely the onus should not be on the patient, but the doctor?

And it’s not just that doctors are more likely to dismiss or downgrade a woman’s symptoms — there are also certain conditions that are classified as either ‘male’ or ‘female’, meaning they are routinely misdiagnosed.

Research from the British Heart Foundation carried out at the University of Leeds found that women are 50 times more likely than men to be wrongly diagnosed after a heart attack.

This is despite the fact that 28,000 women in the UK die following a heart attack each year — making it the second biggest killer of women after dementia.

Helen Greenwood believes that if she’d been a middle-aged man, her treatment would have been very different. She experienced severe pains in her chest and arms while out with her nine-year-old daughter, Isabelle.

Helen, 43, a full-time mum from Berkshire, didn’t realise she was having a major heart attack, but when the pain abated, she was concerned enough to arrange an emergency appointment with her GP.

Helen says: ‘He asked if it felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest. I said I didn’t think so. This answer was enough for him to say it was nothing to do with my heart. He didn’t take my blood pressure or anything.

kayleigh South (pictured), 27, says she is lucky to be alive after hospitals failed to diagnose that she had pulmonary embolisms

‘I was a relatively young woman, and young women don’t have heart attacks. I felt sidelined and ignored, but he was the expert, so I trusted him. I didn’t want to make a fuss.’

Twelve hours later, Helen’s condition had worsened, with pains now in her jaw and neck, too. This time, she dialled 999.

She was taken to hospital, where an angiogram showed a severe blockage in her heart — she was rushed into surgery to have a life-saving stent fitted, followed by three more a few days later.

She says: ‘I remember the cardiologist scanning my heart exclaiming: “Wow! I did not expect to see that. You are one very lucky lady to be here now.” I’m so glad I didn’t listen to my GP. It was a very close call for me.’

But she adds: ‘If I’d been a middle-aged man, maybe then they would’ve realised I was in the middle of a heart attack. I felt ignored.’

And mother-of-two Kayleigh South, 27, says she is lucky to be alive after she claims two GPs and two hospitals failed to diagnose that she was suffering from pulmonary embolisms.

The bank worker, who lives in Somerset with 38-year-old husband Matt, sought medical help after suffering from agonising chest pain for ten days in May 2015. But her symptoms — the breathlessness and feeling of a heavy weight crushing her chest —weren’t picked up until it was almost too late.

She recalls: ‘I had never felt pain like it. I just wanted to die. It hurt to take a breath so badly that you didn’t want to.

‘I first saw a woman GP, who was excellent. She sent me to A&E with a letter — but, despite scans, nothing was picked up and I was told it could be chest wall pain.

‘Things got worse, so I went back to A&E and then to see another out-of-hours doctor over the next few days.’

It was this encounter that has left a lasting impression on Kayleigh.

‘The pain was so severe that I was crying. I couldn’t cope. But this doctor was very dismissive,’ she says.

‘Matt was in the room with me and the doctor spoke to him, like I wasn’t there. He told him that the pain was all in my head. I felt so upset.

‘It was horrible. Why wasn’t he speaking to me? Maybe it was because I was crying and I was quite emotional. But I knew it wasn’t in my head. It was real and I was in a hell of a lot of pain.’

Luckily, Kayleigh went back to A&E herself, where, this time, an X-ray of her chest picked up the near-fatal blood clots making their way to her heart. She was given anticoagulants just in the nick of time.

So, why might medics — and not just men, but some women, too — be biased when it comes to female patients?

Although it’s true that there are now more female GPs than male (around 52 per cent of GPs are women), it’s been well recorded that medicine has evolved largely through the study of the male body — and following the teachings of male experts.

Stephanie Dickson (pictured), 24, saw her GP eleven times before her untimely death

Even the animals that are used in laboratories for medical testing are predominantly male.

Yet men and women’s bodies are profoundly different, leaving women on the back foot when it comes to diagnosis.

Women are twice as likely as men to be told they have anxiety and stress — with doctors sometimes overlooking serious illnesses as a result.

Tragically, this is what happened to 24-year-old Stephanie Dickson, who died before doctors discovered she was suffering from a brain tumour instead of the stress and depression they had diagnosed.

Over nine months, Stephanie, from Edinburgh, saw her GP 11 times, called doctors out four times and visited her local hospital’s A&E department twice, as she suffered with debilitating headaches, neck ache and dizziness.

But instead of being sent for a scan or blood tests, which could have saved her, the young office worker was given antidepressants.

It was her mother, childminder Debbie, 53, who found her daughter dead within hours of doctors sending her home for the last time in April 2013.

The fatal accident inquiry (Scotland’s equivalent of an inquest) heard in January this year that had Stephanie been given the correct treatment, up until the day she died she would have had a 98 per cent chance of survival.

Debbie says: ‘Steph was blonde, blue-eyed and very girly, and I do think that had something to do with doctors not having taken her seriously.

‘When we heard that she could have been saved, it was devastating.

‘I want her death to be investigated further to see if chances to save her were missed because she was a woman. I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.’

DO YOU think your symptoms were not taken seriously because of your sex? Write to femailreaders@dailymail.co.uk