Today I was researching the impact of gender on pain management and one of the websites I visited was www.partnersagainstpain.com and reviewed their research on gender and pain management.  I want to include a brief summary below of what I discovered.  If you want to learn more please go to their website and click on Pain Resources and Links to find this research.

There is a growing body of literature that indicates that women are more likely than men to be under-treated for their pain.  Studies have shown differences in the attitudes of healthcare providers toward men’s and women’s experiences of pain.

1. McCaffery and Ferrell, using a questionnaire administered to more than 300 nurses, found that most respondents believed that women, compared to men, were less sensitive to pain, more tolerant of pain, less distressed as a result of pain, and more likely to report pain and to express pain through nonverbal gestures.  
2. Regarding physician perceptions of female patients with pain, Hadjistavropoulos and colleagues found that physicians distinguished between their “attractive” and “unattractive” patients. Attractive female patients were perceived as experiencing less pain than unattractive female patients, evidencing a “healthy is beautiful” stereotype.
3. Historically, the medical literature has portrayed women as hysterical and oversensitive. By extension, physicians often view women’s statements as emotional, rather than objective. In one study of patients with chronic pain, female patients were more likely than their male counterparts to be diagnosed with histrionic disorder, excessive emotionality, and attention-seeking behavior.
4. According to an analysis of recent pain research by Hoffmann and Tarzian, women are more likely than men to seek treatment for their pain and are less likely to receive it. The authors suggest that physicians may treat women less for pain based on the presumption women can handle more pain or, conversely, that women are in fact imagining pain where none exists.

We have additional gender related research on our website at www.addiction-free.com and go to ourNews & Research Archives page and review Gender and Pain.  If you want to learn for about pain management go to our Publications page to check out my new book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. 

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