BBC: “The rising number of female doctors is ‘bad for medicine’, and universities should recruit more men, a GP warns.
Writing in the British Medical Journal, Dr Brian McKinstry said female doctors were more likely to work part-time, leading to staffing problems.”
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- My take: Thoroughness, blaming female physicians
- Female neurosurgeons
- Females are being blamed for the physician shortage
- Should doctors want their children to become physicians?
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OOOOoooooo Kevin, talk about putting your tongue on the Third Rail!
Sorry, but it is a colossal waste of resources to train women who plan to take years off for childrearing, followed by part time light duty employement with no on-call responsibilities.
The contortions the politically correct set will twist themselves into to avoid upsetting any of their shibboleths about when discrimination is okay and when it isn’t are truly hilarious.
Remember: as this article states, when men outnumber women in medical schools it’s because of “unfair discrimination”. Clearly the only remedy then is to change the rules to get more women in!
But when women outnumber men, why aren’t those foolish men pulling themselves up by their bootstraps like they are supposed to? The idea of changing the rules to favor men just because they’re not doing as well is rubbish! Ha ha ha ha.
I find the implication that the “public” is entitled to a person’s service disturbing.
So this will either be great for physician’s salaries or hasten the prevalence of mid-levels playing doctor.
The fact is that this whole entree of females into medical school was originally part of an affirmative action play. Now medicine is becoming increasingly unattractive to alpha males (and females) due to the inability to realize the product of one’s labor and the replacement of an entrepreneurial atmosphere with one of defacto government/insurance price controlled oligopoly. The response of females, who ultimately realize you cannot have it all, is to cut back, or more often, quit. Males are more likely the sole or major breadwinner in a marriage, and society frowns on being “Mr. Mom”, so they are less likely to leave full-time practice.
Interestingly, most female physicians who work “part time” work close to 40 hours per week or more. It’s just that the standard is 55 to 60 hours per week – not too realistic for parents with young children (of either sex).
This is true. “Full-time” in medicine is 50% more than many other jobs. And we pay our employees, but not ourselves, time-and-a-half for hours worked over 40/week. The fact is that you have to cover your overhead before you can take home any profit and it is very difficult to do this working “part-time”, so many find quitting the only practical alternative, especially if you have to employ a nanny in order to work.
As a female physician, I think we bring an different and important perspective on patient care. That said, It really saddened me at a recent Medical School Reunion to find that many of my brightest and most talented female colleuges were no longer practicing medicine at all.
Dr. Noelle, can you expand on that?
I always figured, you know, realities of children and families, women would be less productive than males until someone invents a better way to perpetuate the species. I figured the production gap would be large short-term as women enter the field. Give it some years, children grow, part-time work goes back to full time and the gap would diminish overall.
I figured overall, it would be sort of a relatively small ten percent fudge factor.
Do you think it’s even more than that?
>> I find the implication that the “public” is entitled to a person’s service disturbing.
A natural outgrowth of socialized medicine.
The good news is that this means that physician supply is flexible–the planners don’t have to try to forecast need (But of course they will and just as certainly, they will be wrong).
That there is a potential supply of physician labor being voluntarily withheld from the market means that any supply shortage can be quickly filled by people reentering full-time practice–IF the rewards of doing so are allowed to adjust as in any other labor market. If the Commies in charge insist on controling the market and fixing prices–then that will not happen. It shows, however, that they don’t HAVE to import cheap labor from India.
They can import docs from India…..or wherever. Thing is, doctors from foreign countries practice to the same demographics as Americans. They are somewhat more likely to specialize, and they’re less likely to practice in small-town USA. If the community is not a good fit to a US citizen, it is even less so to a Pakistani. They finish their J-1 and go to the suburbs with their own ethnic group. Not that I blame them, I’d do the same.
it’s kind of embarrassing to hear an educated person say things like that. the fact is that physicians, whether male of female, are just realizing that they can have a life and practice medicine, meaning they work less hours, and spending more time on the quality of their lives.
the fact is, when a population is increasing, you can’t expect to make up for the difference by just increasing your enrollment by a few places every few years, and blame underproductivity on women. what you can do is cut funds where they’re usually wasted, and spend that money on training more doctors.
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