Unveiling Gender Bias: An Examination of Healthcare Provider Diagnosis of Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries. Insights from Case Vignettes

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) has gained public attention due to increased awareness of its neurological and physical effects, especially among male athletes. This study investigated how healthcare providers diagnose mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in male versus female patients by presenting 208 physicians with randomly assigned gender-based patient vignettes. Physicians rated the likelihood of mTBI based on symptoms in the vignette, showing no significant difference in diagnosis between the genders of the presented vignettes (female: M = 2.19, SD = 0.47; male: M = 2.17, SD = 0.51). Furthermore, likelihood ratings for other potential diagnoses revealed no gender-based differences, indicating that physicians assessed the likelihood of diagnoses similarly for male and female patients with comparable symptoms. The exploratory hypothesis examined whether the demographics of the healthcare raters interacted with patient gender in diagnostic ratings. The findings suggest that neither gender nor experience level had a measurable impact on diagnostic likelihood decision-making. The study discusses implications and recommendations for future research.