ARTICLE
Forty percent of female doctors in a new study stopped working or moved to working part time within a few years of finishing their medical training. In contrast, all of the male doctors kept working full time. The researchers say this is important for a few reasons. First, there's a growing shortage of doctors in the U.S. Losing doctors early in their careers is making it worse. And losing female doctors may be particularly problematic. We know that patients of female physicians have lower hospital readmission rates and lower mortality in comparison to patients of male physicians. Further, when we lose women in medicine, we lose the potential for them as leaders in health care. This is really important given that gender diversity in leadership is highly associated with better profits and decision making. Researchers asked what factors played a role in their decisions about working full or part-time. The researchers created word clouds based on their answers. "For men, the big words that jump out are financial - need money, loans. I don’t think you could even find the word child on the male one." For women, "the major factor was child care responsibilities, balancing work and family and children." The researchers said women and men should be free to choose how much they work or whether they stay home for family reasons. But it should be a genuine choice, not something forced on them by circumstances. “The major gap between these two groups is suggesting that we don’t have systems in place to support physicians as parents. That is a major conclusion from the study." The U.S. as a whole lags behind much of the world when it comes to supporting work/family balance. "Having resources that can help you take care of your family while you're taking care of your work, such as on-site day care, flexibility in work hours and paid maternity leave, would be helpful." Federal law guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but it doesn't mean that people are able to actually take them. Similarly, men often have access to leave, but the institutional culture often pushes against them actually taking it. It's part of the leadership's role to actually set an example that makes it OK to use these policies once they're actually in place. Source: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20190805/Female-doctors-continue-to-pay-a-higher-price-for-family.aspx