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Female doctors hurt productivity: report
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| Contributor | kal |
| Last Edited | kal May 30, 2009 06:21am |
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| Category | General |
| News Date | Saturday, May 30, 2009 12:20:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The growing ranks of female physicians in Canada will slash medical productivity by the equivalent of at least 1,600 doctors within a decade, concludes a provocative new analysis of data indicating that female MDs work fewer hours on average than their male colleagues.
The paper comes just a year after a blue-chip list of medical educators publicly condemned what they called the scapegoating of women for Canada's severe doctor shortage.
Dr. Mark Baerlocher, the study's lead author, acknowledged he is tackling a thorny issue, but stressed he does not favour curbing the number of female physicians. Instead, the study calls for greater increases in medical-school enrolment to offset the phenomenon.
"It's not meant to be a negative paper in any way," he said in an interview. "It's meant to take an objective, hard look at the work-hour differences that most people would agree are very real.... You can't simply ignore it because it's a sensitive issue."
The researchers analyzed results from the 2007 National Physician Survey.
The survey found that women, on average, provided 30 hours a week of direct patient care, compared with 35 by men, the result of female doctors -- still burdened disproportionately with child rearing and other domestic tasks -- doing less on-call work and being more likely to take leaves.
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