The role and impact of gender and age on children's preferences for pediatricians.

Objective: To determine the physician gender preferences of children and the consequences of meeting/not meeting children's preferences, both in their liking and feeling comfortable in talking with the pediatrician.

Methods: A convenience sample of 125 parent-child pairs completed surveys when coming for an outpatient visit to a university-sponsored, urban pediatric practice.

Results: Both adolescents and preadolescents (especially females) as young as 9 years of age expressed a gender preference for their physician. Meeting those preferences significantly affected how much children both liked and felt comfortable in talking with their physician. In young teen females, gender-preferred physicians are synonymous with gender-congruent physicians; yet although their preference for gender-congruent physicians increased in early adolescence, data indicated that their preference was often not met for several years to come.

Conclusions: Liking and comfort with the pediatrician are not only desirable, but may also influence the doctor-patient relationship and young people's ability to develop health communication skills that they need as adults. These results, if validated, could also lead to a rethinking of parental dominance in the role of physician selection.