Fleck wrote:
The doc beside me in the fht works monday afternoon from 1 to 4. Tuesday 10 to noon and 1 to 4. Wednesday off. Thursday is a repeat of Tuesday and Friday is 930 to noon. For that she gets 300 K a year minus about 100K of overhead. If she knew how to bill properly she would probably clear 250 K a year. No weekends. One evening clinic for three hours once every three weeks. Eight weeks of holiday in a year and its unusual for a day of clinic to be not cancelled at least once every 2 weeks. What I'm going to say here is going to sound very un-progressive and not-2018
I recall reading something a few years back, about how the big push to get more women into medicine in Canada, that started back in the late 1980's, and saw a huge surge in women as practicing doctors, has had a dramatic impact on the delivery of medical services across Canada - most of it not good. Note this is NOT questioning the skill of those women doctors in ANY way, more their work habits as it relates to other things and this is where it get's awkward.
1. Many women GP's, prefer NOT to have a clinic of their own, just working Part-Time or doing locums here and there, as well as the need to take time off when they have children of their own. This has lead to the hop-scotch patterns of availability that you speak of for GPs.
2. On the specialists side, many women doctors have not chosen to go into the harder-core surgical specialties, things like Orthopedic Surgery as an example, leaving those specialties vulnerable to shortages of surgeons and specialists, and thus longer wait times. The women doctors who do chose to specialize have, tended to chose the less demanding specialties.
no, that was my understanding too. more women than men in med school, and women disproportionately choosing general practice over the specialities. (i wouldn't say 'less demanding,' though - i knew lots of people desperate to get into things like dermatology and radiology because the hours are easy and the pay is great, whereas general practice can actually be a real slog.)
anyway, then more women working part-time, especially since, as you say, they're having families.
there's a lot going on here. the medical education system is just busted, for a start, but beyond that you could cite family leave policy too. lots of female MDs might have to take leave because their husbands can't - even in 2018 it's common enough to find that women get several months for mat leave and dads get a few days for pat leave. open that system up and maybe (maybe?) more women would be back to the workplace sooner and more men would be sharing the childcare load.
-mike
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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/