Comments on: Do female doctors hurt physician productivity?

By: Russ Kennedy MD

Russ Kennedy MD — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:54:42 +0000

There is no point in even addressing this m/f issue. Its not going to change. Women will work less men will work more. There will always be less “doctor equivalents” in female graduates. There is no way that our society would tolerate accepting less women into med school no matter how good the reasoning was that they dont provide the same number of (forgive this!) “man-hours”. The only solution is to train more doctors, period.

By: To: Ann Merritt MD

To: Ann Merritt MD — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:01:57 +0000

Women live longer, but that’s beside the point.

If you read the actual article, which I have, you’ll see that they also found that women doctors retire earlier, take more vacation, more sick time, and more parental leave (for obvious reasons).

And those data are not incorporated into the 1600/1800 doctors figure, which means the figure presented is in fact an underestimate of the discrepancy.

Nice to see few people actually care about the facts.

Let’s just get over ourselves, call a spade a spade, and deal with it!

The first step to dealing with the issue is recognizing that there is an issue.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:30:40 +0000

I cannot think of more than two (of about a hundred) of my female medical school colleagues that work AT ALL, let alone work 30 hours/week.

I think this issue has been long ignored, as is the issue of admitting older students to medical school for a second career. Both of these phenomena will not help the predicted physician shortage.

By: Female doctors scapegoat for Canadian doctor shortage: National Post « Evidenced.blog

Sun, 31 May 2009 00:34:07 +0000

[...] (Hat tip: KevinMD) [...]

By: MDNewsJax

MDNewsJax — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:24:41 +0000

Maybe if all husbands (including physician husbands) stepped up to the plate things would even out for that beloved work/balance myth.

By: Ann Merritt MD

Ann Merritt MD — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:29:25 +0000

This is misleading! You are leaving out one very important factor. Women doctors live longer than men doctors ( like women and men in general) and are less likely to have to retire early due to disability, so they make up for working fewer hours while raising a family by working more, on average, later in life.