Abigail Cantwell, a 28-year-old anesthesia resident in Portland, Oregon, never expected her candid retelling of being mistaken for a nurse to ignite an online conversation on gender bias in medicine.

Some, but not all, research suggests that more women recall events that happened under anesthesia than men do, and that women wake up from anesthesia faster than men.

DEAR DR. ROACH: My husband, who is 71, has been having some short-term memory problems over the past two years. We recently saw his primary doctor, who asked him some questions and had him do a few ...