Fallout from the recent Macleans article:
“It was a shock . . . it is scapegoating females,” said Vukin, a second-year medical student at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario.The jump in female medical students to more than half of current enrolment is being pinpointed as a reason for the growing shortage of family doctors and specialists.
Commentators, including Dr. Brian Day, president of the Canadian Medical Association, have said it’s clear female doctors won’t work the same hours or have the same lifespan of contributions to the medical system as males.
Related posts:
- Female physicians and the Canadian doctor shortage
- Do female doctors hurt physician productivity?
- Males = specialists, females = primary care physicians
- The male primary care physician
- The attack on female physicians continues
- Universal health care and the physician shortage
- Physician shortage in Boca Raton
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{ 9 comments }
To say it’s the fault of women physicians is to ignore the very large drive of both genders to have what they’re now calling “life balance.” What’s enormously popular these days? Radiology, opthalmology, anesthesiology, dermatology…and emergency medicine. The common thread in these fields is money and good hours: EM’s shift work is now seen as a huge plus. PCPs are not setting up Botox clinics on the side because they developed a love of wrinkle correction.
From what I can see, a large reason why pediatrics is even still viable is because women choose to go into it despite low pay and low appreciation in the self-doctoring age.
Canada needs to face facts, not jump on an issue I see perpetuated by older, male physicians of a certain generation who don’t see that it’s everyone, not just the darn women. Why not blame all the 50- and 60- something men I know who are taking early retirement instead? Doctors are burned out and quitting as a whole. Canada needs to fix their system, not try to divide and conquer.
Maybe true. And although I enjoy my female colleagues’ contributions to my practice community, there is an effect of doctors who work less than full time. Many do not keep full staff privileges or cover ER call yet capture some of the more sustaining (read lucrative) outpatient clinical and surgical activity. Many also have spouses who are physicians in full-time practice who are also the primary breadwinners for their families, so the part-time woman doctor’s requirements to have a busier full-time practice are relieved, giving them more time for family and other non-practice activity (sounds kind of good to me, actually.)
On one hand, that is their right, and their skills should give them the same access to a community as those of any other doctor, but the dynamic of half-time practitioners can have the effect of cream skimming and make it just that more difficult for the doctor in full-time practice (gender notwithstanding)who also carries hospital coverage obligations.
There are unintended consequences of this kind of practice, and they aren’t all positive.
To say it’s the fault of women physicians is to ignore the very large drive of both genders to have what they’re now calling “life balance.”
Many female physicians desire “life balance”. Many male physicians, including myself, wouldn’t mind having a more traditional practice, but are strongly encouraged by our wives to have more “life balance”.
I agree. It’s true, but not “blaming” women. It’s just plain reality.
forget about women physicians, what about those who enter med school in their 50s???
Out-of-touch med school admission committee academics love accepting ex-hippies who’ve developed a hankering for life-long learning. Then these folks take 6 years to get through school, 5 years to do a 3-yr residency (or they don’t even do one), then if they practice at all, it’s for 10-15 yrs!
What a waste.
I had one academic GI at a dinner party espouse the virtues of his med school (a major NYC med school) recently accepting a mother/daughter combination. He just didn’t get my argument that this was detrimental from the standpoint of the future physician pool.
The same is true of pharmacists, actually. It’s possible to work 20 hours a week and bring in $60K/year. Who wouldn’t want that?
From the standpoint of work pool, it’s a terrible drain because women are inherently less valuable from an hours-worked point of view. You need two women to equal one man during child-rearing years. This isn’t helping the pharmacist shortage.
I don’t really have an opinion on the matter (good/bad), but it’s certainly reality.
Sorry happy I disagree. I went to med school in my early thirties. Included in my class was a woman who was pushing 50 and had been a RN for almost 30 years. She is now one of the leading primary care docs at the university AND on the state medical board (probably pushing 65 now). I don’t see her retiring anytime soon. Why don’t we talk about the spoiled frat boys who seem to inhabit each class with there obnoxious attitude and then run off to the highest paying least patient-oriented specialty there is. I used to call my med school the high school class from hell because of these schmucks. The childish statements of these jokers was amazing (from the eyes of a thirty something ex-military). That is a much bigger issue than the occasional older med student (and lets be honest they are by FAR the minority of 0-5% of each class over 40). Get you head out of your butt with your clueless statements.
sorry, forgot to put quotes around the first sentence of my prior comment.
Though on average, women physicians tend to work less than men, I don’t “blame” women. Society actively discourages the traditional physician practice of long office hours+ ER/hospital coverage with 1) increasingly confiscatory taxes for each additional hour worked, 2) the increased liability of ER/hospital coverage, and 3) better reimbursement for the “lifestyle” specialties than primary care or general surgery. Female physicans are leading the way to a balanced lifestyle, but male physicians are rapidly following.
Any of you who have been out 10-15 years or so can plainly see that very few females remain in practice. Attrition begins immediately after residency. The reason is simple, you can’t have it all. What appears to happen is that either family demands or burn-out take a toll. This is not “bad”, this is reality, and it applies to ALL professions.
I would like my daughter to have a professional degree to fall back on, but I am more concerned she be happily married with a family than work full-time for Scooby snacks. The few full-time female physicians I know working past their mid-forties are working part-time, are still single or childless, or lesbian.
Let’s not blame female physicians. I think they are smart and make good decisions. Any man who thinks he can have it all working like a dog 24/7 is fooling himself too. Most of the men I know that are married to their careers soon find their marriage ending in divorce, or never get married to begin with.
What we need is fewer cowardly lions and more leaders in the medical profession. The inclination to work has been lost as government and insurance company meddling coupled with perpetually lower pay make it necessary to spend less time, not more, practicing medicine.
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