Comments on Macleans article please...

[JayP]

Alright, so there are lots of premeds on here with nothing really to do This article generated some controversy in our class, please have a read if you are bored and comment:

 

http://www.macleans.ca/science/health/article.jsp?content=20080102_122329_6200

[Meredith]

I liked this article. I think it did a great job of describing the pros and cons of increasing numbers of female doctors. It really irks me that health human resource planning articles often mention women taking more time off and working less hours... and neglect to mention that they also do the bulk of home-work. I think it is an important thing to remember before (some) people jump on the bandwagon that more women doctors is bad for healthcare - they are not lazy, they just usually have more than medical work to worry about.

 

That said, I do think that all doctors have made a committment, and have made some sort of obligation to practice for some amount of time (I'm being vague because I do not actually know what such parameters should be). I do not think I would ever leave the profession on a permanent / full-time basis to raise children. I feel that if I am lucky enough to get into medical school and am greatly subsidized by taxpayers, I have an obligation to practice. I don't have children, so I am speculating, but this is what I think at the moment.

 

I think that it is important to note that most people of our generation (i.e., pre-med to med student to young doctor) want to work fewer hours than the previous generations of doctors who worked 80 hours a week.

 

I think more than anything else, this article highlights the need for more medical student spots. Women provide good medical care, and I don't think the problem is with too many women. The problem is with not enough doctors being trained.

[Soho]

An interesting view on the doctor shortage. I just had a problem with the last page and sentence

 

“Make sure you absolutely need help before you go to a physician,” Boudreau says. “Odds are, your doctor is more sick than you.”

 

really? do we want to engender (get it..gender..) the view that doctors are being bothered by their patients or that they are suffering because of them?

[KMG007]

The part I thought was interesting was that when they talked about sick days they included nurses. Most nurses are woman. It is a fact. I know in the emerge I work in at one point we had five male nurses now we are down to one...we have about 30 female ones. Nurses are going to get sick more not because they are female, but because they do the front line work and are most exposed to sick people. I felt that particular data point a bit flawed if they are going to include female nurses in it.

[barnickles]

Haha - what I thought was the funniest part was the statement because women 'shy away from surgery', that this means that there will be a shortage of surgeons in the future!

 

Now, there already are a shortage of surgeons (aren't wait list times for ortho about 6 months right now?).. but I don't think it's in any way due to a lack of interest in the surgical residencies. Aren't they always, across all the surgical specialties, the most competitive residency spots to get in the CARMS match every year? Don't think the shortage of surgeons is in any way due to a lack of med-student interest...

 

Other than that, a positive program encouraging women who are entering the field to seek methods specifically geared at them to prevent burnout would probably be positive. Like why don't we set up a presentation for women in medicine to demonstrate the types of help they could get for around the house?

 

For instance, my parents are both lawyers, and my mother has a very fast-paced career (arguably more so than my father). I had a part-time nanny, and stayed home during the day with my grandparents when I was little. And we had a cleaning lady come twice a week who prepared meals and took care of the house-work & ironing. It only costs around 50-70$ a visit, and it takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of the professional woman to have even just that small part of housework taken care of.

 

Or there's caterers and restaurants that have pre-planned family meal plans where you can pick up your dinners once or twice a week from them on your way home from work to take some of the pressure off of cooking every day. Plus, there are grocery delivery services, pharmacy delivery, personal shoppers, personal accountants, etc.. all kinds of occasional contractors that can shave some time off of your responsibilities so you can spend the time you have when your not at work having quality time with your kids - which is what they really need - instead of running around after everything.

 

I mean.. I think if women in medicine are just made more aware of their options, we can have as happy and healthy a workforce even if the profession does become a 'pink ghetto'! Add to this an increase in medical enrollment, so we can afford to have doctors give better QUALITY of care by spending more time with patients (which, by the way, may increase the EFFICIENCY of each visit, thus requiring each patient to MAKE fewer visits to their physician.. which might outway the benefit of seeing more patients in a given day in the long run).. then this can only help but increase the quality of life of Canadians, nation-wide.

 

Whew, so that was a long rant - sorry! Just my two cents.. but what do I know? I'm just a struggling pre-meder .

[p0795195]

Thinking that women are a problem in the medical field is illogical. They may statistically work a litte less but they bring to the feild an aspect that men dont. Some people feel more comfortable being treated by a woman and it is completely understandable. However, when you consider that some schools (especially those in quebec) have 60-70% women in their programs while applications are about 50-50, there is a problem. We need a balance of me and women to make this happen. It is true that women generally get better grades than men which favours them for admission but in the end that does not make them better practitioners. Once again in quebec, some schools count grades for as much as 70% of the admission decision leaving 30% on the interviews. I think that a reform is necessary in the admission systems of some schools to ensure equal chance for men and women as they will make different but equally proficient doctors. Although you do need a cutoff, does anyone really believe that a student with a 4.0 GPA will make a better doctor than one with a 3.85? Not me.

 

PS. Ottawa U's method of 90% interview value is a great equalizer and to my belief should be considered by all.

[JayP]

Thanks for the input everyone. Specifically, more than one female has said this article is sexist and I am wondering what everyone thinks (women in particular). Myself and others feel that the article is not, especially if one looks at what sexism actually is. That is the great thing about opinions though....everybody has one

[Meredith]

Is it sexist? ... maybe a little.

 

I kinda found the term "pink ghetto" offensive. I work in healthcare, and most of the leaders are women (and in very high positions) and do fantastic jobs - especially considering all they have to balance (likewise for the men, I just mean I do not notice a difference). So I find that the article makes an assumption that more women in healthcare will mean less leadership from doctors and less inclination to go into specific specialties.

 

Before they just indirectly assume that only 19% of surgeons are women because only 19% of applicants are women, I'd like to see some numbers. Perhaps men have an easier time getting into said specialties because assumptions are made about the women applying. No, you are not allowed to ask specific questions about family, etc., in interviews, but I bet there are some surgery docs who make assumptions about their female applicants. Perhaps not... as I said, I would like to see some numbers supporting statements about suffering highly-trained specialty fields.

 

Also, like I said in my first post, I think the article did a decent job of explaining why women work less, so this recognition of differing challenges helps with the potential sexism.

[Satsuma]

For starters....didn`t read the article.

 

But wanted to comment on the "problem" of women wanting to work less hours then men. Well, I don`t actually think the problem is the women wanting to work less hours....I think the problem is the expectation in medicine that physicians work 80+ hrs a week.

 

These working conditions are becoming more and more unacceptable to even the male physicians of this generation. Today, more and more men are taking paternity leave to be around for their kids, in medicine and outside of medicine. There was a neurosurg resident who took an entire year from his residency after having a child a few years back. I recently sent out an email to a staff physician...and a got a paternity leave message. I suspect in years to come these numbers will increase as men gain more support for such decisions. So people shouldn`t expect that a man isn`t going to want time away from his career.

 

I often laugh when I hear people complaining that women physicians work less hours then men. I wonder if the people complaining realize there is a good chance that that part-time female physician actually works more hours then other "full-time" workers who clock their 35 hr weeks.

 

 

It only costs around 50-70$ a visit, and it takes a tremendous amount of pressure off of the professional woman to have even just that small part of housework taken care of.

 

I appreciate this point. But these options/solutions are out there for any professional. Why is it that it is seen as taking the burden off the professional woman?

 

 

For the stats issue....applicant stats can be found on the carms.ca website.

In 2007 151 women applied to surgical specialties and 105 matched. This is compared to 232 men who applied to surgical specialties with 166 of them matching. (the stats encompass all surg specialties, not just gen surg)