As More Women Become Doctors, Care is Changing

CHICAGO – With women becoming doctors in ever-increasing numbers, medicine is becoming more patient-friendly, treatment is improving and malpractice suits may become less common.

But experts also say the feminization of medicine is helping to lower physician salaries, encourage part-time doctoring and exacerbate a looming shortage of physicians.

The sex change in the medical field has been swift and dramatic. Since 1975 the percentage of doctors who are women has nearly tripled, from 9 percent to 25 percent. And the wave is far from cresting: 38 percent of doctors younger than 44 are women, and half of all students in the nation’s medical schools are women, a change that is expected to intensify.

Already, women have taken over some specialties, such as pediatrics, and they are swarming into internal medicine, primary care, psychiatry, dermatology, and obstetrics and gynecology.

The changes are setting in motion dramatic new trends that already are affecting both patient care and the profession of doctoring.

One result is a patient-doctor relationship that is more empathetic, compassionate and nurturing. Many women go into medicine because they feel rewarded helping people, said Jorge Girotti, associate dean for admissions at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical School, where 54 percent of the 300 entering students are female.

“If you bring that attitude in you’re more likely to see the overall patient as a whole rather than just a disease,” he said. “Knowing what may be going on with a particular patient may require a broader interest rather than just the one symptom they tell you about.”

But the sweeping changes also are affecting how doctors spend their time. Female physicians are more likely to work in teams, provide care for the poor, take institutional jobs with shorter hours and take lower-paying positions, all of which lower salaries overall, according to experts. They also are pioneering a trend toward part-time work and rebelling against the extremely long hours often associated with the profession.

A recent survey of graduating pediatric residents found that 58 percent of the women – and 15 percent of the men – said they had a strong interest in part-time work. Currently, just 15 percent of pediatricians work part time.

“Both men and women are coming into medicine with an interest in being able to combine career and family, and they are not willing to sacrifice completely towards their profession,” said Dr. Wendy Levinson, chief of medicine at the University of Toronto.

Many women like to work for hospitals and other major medical facilities where part-time work is an option and group malpractice insurance is provided, said Debra Roter of Johns Hopkins University. They also are more likely to favor national health insurance.

“Female physicians, just like female workers in many other professions, tend to go in and out of the work force during childbearing years when they’re raising their children,” she said. “Working for some nationalized medical insurance plan would allow them to have more reasonable work hours.”

Dr. Rebecca Turk, a part-time pediatrician at Loyola University Medical Center, started off working full time, but as the first of her four children came she decreased her office hours. Now she works three days a week and one Saturday a month.

“I really love being a doctor and I also love being a mother and having time with my children. It’s nice to be able to do both,” said Turk.

But the trend of physicians spending less time in practice and more time with their families – enjoying a quality of life denied to previous generations – is contributing to a looming doctor shortage, experts warn.

Doctors’ desires for a better life clash with people’s growing expectation of around-the-clock access to health care. That is already exacerbating a shortage in some specialties – radiology, anesthesiology, orthopedic surgery, cardiology and dermatology – and it’s creeping up in others, said Dr. Richard A. Cooper, director of the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Health Policy Institute.