A HARVARD University study has recently revealed that hospital patients are less likely to die if they have a female doctor than if they have a male one.

UK doctors have broadly welcomed the findings and suggest they provide a powerful argument to end the UK pay gap between male and female doctors.

The most common explanation why patients of female doctors survive (echoed in the Harvard study) is that they listen more.

This is probably true – not because females are born good listeners but because our society still educates men to act and speak and women to observe and listen.

These are excellent skills in a doctor but I suspect undervalued in medical schools.

A more sinister explanation for the difference is sexism and ageism, pernicious attitudes rarely challenged in medical schools or identified by recruitment boards.

There are frequent reports of women with cancer or heart disease being diagnosed late because doctors ignored their reported symptoms.

Many who receive the poorest treatment are old and female, often widowed.

Too often they are treated with casual indifference. I recall that when I took my father to A&E he was frequently referred to as “sir”. My mother was never called “ma’am”. I could rely on doctors to fight for my father’s life. I had to argue with them to keep my mother alive.

The brutal truth is that if a doctor values the lives of men over those of older women he will not fight as hard to keep his female patients alive.

Such attitudes need to be challenged at every level of the NHS.