Women doctors are being left behind
More women than men are being recruited into the medical profession - but fewer women are appointed to senior leadership roles. If the trend continues the medical profession will hit crisis point and PCTs could experience a dramatic shortage of working doctors, finds a new report titled Women Doctors - Making a Difference.
Women
account for 56.2 percent of total admissions to
medical schools in 2008/09 and so the NHS must break the glass ceiling that has
prevented women from moving up in the ranks says the report.
Baroness Deech, Chair of the National Working Group on Women in Medicine which published the report, said: “We should make our goal a profession where every woman and man goes as far as they wish and as far as their talents permit. Our report focuses very much on the implementation of change. In order to achieve continuity of patient care and the best use of every doctor, the reforms must be tackled.”
The report outlines the barriers that stop female doctors from reaching senior positions and leadership roles and puts forward recommendations which include:
• Improving access to mentoring and career advice
• Encouraging women in leadership
• Improving access to part-time working and flexible training
• Ensuring that the arrangements for revalidation are clear and explicit
• Women should be encouraged to apply for the Clinical Excellence Awards Scheme
• Ensuring that the medical workforce planning apparatus takes account of the increasing number of women in the medical profession
• Improving access to childcare
• Improving support for those who are also carers.
Commenting in a foreword to the report Dr Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, said the workplace and training environment for doctors has got to become more flexible. “The issues raised are not new—nor perhaps are they unexpected. But to tackle them is going to require a step change in how the medical workforce as a whole behaves. It will require an acceptance of alternative and differing patterns of working and training for all medical staff, not just women,” Donaldson said. “Wider changes in society such as some men choosing to become the primary child carer, mean that the recommendations in this report are proposed not just to provide opportunity for women, but to offer better options to the entire medical workforce,” he said.
In his 2006 Annual Report, Donaldson said the problem faced by women doctors “is not access to medical school, but rather how we ensure the female medical workforce is able to fulfill its potential once in employment.” The steps outlined in this latest report, such as improved mentoring support and the option of part-time training could go a long way to achieving this, he said. “I will now ensure that the Department of Health considers each of the recommendations proposed in the report before deciding how to proceed.”
Professor Bhupinder Sandhu, Chair of the BMA’s Equal Opportunities committee, said that while the report celebrates how far female doctors have come it also shows how “much more still needs to be done.” Professor Sandhu, a consultant paediatric gastroenterologist in Bristol and a contributor to the report, said, “This report clearly demonstrates that there is no single answer to improving the careers of female doctors. We’ve come a long way in the last decade and that is extremely positive but our journey is by no means over.”
Women doctors are still often left behind and this is apparent in academia, surgery and leadership roles. Young female doctors need role models so that they can see that it is possible to be a successful doctor and have a family, she said. “While the report makes specific recommendations, like improving childcare facilities for doctors and making the NHS more family friendly, there needs to be a change of attitude and culture to enable female doctors to reach their full potential in medicine. This change of attitude is important among female and male doctors,” Dr Sandhu said.
