The other week, a former Imperial Professor, Prof Meiron Thomas, hit the headlines with an article which talked about why having so many women doctors is hurting the NHS. This article was prompted by the statistic that by 2017, there will be more women than men doctors in the UK. Since the article has gained press attention, it has been widely criticised by institutions such as the British Medical Association (BMA), The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) and The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP).
I’m sure that these responses will be more articulate than mine but as a woman medical student and as a representative of other women medical students, I felt inclined to offer my own response as well.
The main point of Meiron’s article seems to be that women doctors tend to work part-time after graduating and go for certain specialities, like general practice, over fields such as surgery in order to ‘look for a better work-life balance when they have young children’. He goes on to claim that as training a doctor requires significant investment, we should prioritise medical school places to those who will go on to repay that debt by working full-time i.e. we should prioritise men.
Firstly, I don’t believe we should propagate, as a medical community, this culture where striving to find a ‘work-life’ balance is shameful or something that indicates a lack of commitment to the NHS. If we want our doctors to feel supported within the NHS and happy with their career choices, surely we should strive to create a work-life balance for all of our doctors.
Secondly, it is undeniable that the demographic of our doctors is changing. Meiron is quite right to point out that until the sixties, fewer than 10% of British doctors were women. Change is a very good thing in this case; part of creating good NHS service is creating a diverse staff which can relate to our diverse patients, and given that a patient’s background may stipulate who may or may not examine them, having a greater equality of genders in our doctors can only be positive. It is also worth pointing out that having a quantifiably larger number of women doctors is only half the story: although there may be more women graduates, the gender split at specialist and consultant level still leaves something to be desired.
RCS’s response highlighted that the desire for part-time work wasn’t wholly from women and that 30% of consultant surgeons wanted to work part-time at some point in their career. What seems to be lacking from Meiron’s argument is why the solution to progression is regression. Our workforce is changing and therefore has different demands: it makes sense to change the workplace to fit this new generation of doctors, not try and force our current demographic to fit a system that no longer works. If women doctors do want to work part-time, maybe we should figure out why, rather than assuming they are less career-oriented than their male peers. Adjustments such as equalising access to parental leave, improving childcare support and flexible working hours may make it easier for all doctors to continue a full-time career after having a child.
Thirdly, as a medical student, I can testify that I see no difference in ambition or capability between by men and women colleagues. Perhaps the reason women are dissuaded from these career paths is that women see no paths through these careers. In my medical career, there has been very little exposure to women working in traditionally men-dominated fields, such as surgery. We are unfortunately part of a self-perpetuating cycle here: there are few women surgeons, so few women medical students see role models, so few women medical students choose surgery. Although I’m encouraged to hear about schemes such as the Women in Surgery group from the RCS, we still have a long way to go in this area.
Although Meiron’s comments have been labelled as ‘hugely demoralising’ by current women doctors, I suppose my concern is that his comments are hugely discouraging to current women medical students. I think it’s disappointing that a senior surgeon would choose to use such a platform in such a way, but if my medical education has taught me anything, it’s the opinion of our patients we should worry about the most. As the Patients Association said: ‘We need all the doctors we can get. Whether they are male or female and working full-time or part-time matters not’.
