Obstetrician gender and the likelihood of performing a maternal request for a cesarean delivery.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the relationship between obstetrician gender and the likelihood of maternal request for cesarean section (CS) within different healthcare institutions (medical centers, regional hospitals, district hospitals, and obstetric and gynecology clinics).


METHODS
Five years of population-based data from Taiwan covering 857,920 singleton deliveries without a clinical indication for a CS were subjected to a multiple logistic regression to examine the association between obstetrician gender and the likelihood of maternal request for a CS.


RESULTS
After adjusting for physician and institutional characteristics, it was found that male obstetricians were more likely to perform a requested CS than female obstetricians in district hospitals (OR=1.53) and clinics (OR=2.26), while obstetrician gender had no discernible associations with the likelihood of a CS upon maternal request in medical centers and regional hospitals.


CONCLUSIONS
While obstetrician gender had the greatest association with delivery mode decisions in the lowest obstetric care units, those associations were diluted in higher-level healthcare institutions.
Liu
Tsai-Ching
TC
Department of Public Finance, National Taipei University, Taipei, Taiwan.
Lin
Herng-Ching
HC
Chen
Chin-Shyan
CS
Lee
Hsin-Chien
HC
D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities; D002585:Cesarean Section; D005260:Female; D006779:Hospitals, Public; D006788:Hospitals, Voluntary; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D009774:Obstetrics; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011247:Pregnancy; D017149:Private Sector; D011336:Probability; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013624:Taiwan