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【社会人文】女性医生迫使就业市场动态生变
Women in Medicine Force Change in Workforce Dynamics
April 2005
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Editor’s Note: “Women are finally gaining equality with their male colleagues in terms of admission to medical school and representation in non-surgical sub-specialties. However, significant disparities remain in surgical sub-specialties, senior academic and leadership positions, as well as in salary. Crucial to the advancement of women in medicine is positive role modeling and mentoring from those who have overcome obstacles and achieved success. The outlook remains bright for women entering medicine and choosing a career path that will bring personal and professional satisfaction.”
— John A. Fromson, M.D., Vice President for Medical Affairs, Massachusetts Medical Society
In July 2003, when Nancy Nielsen, M.D., Ph.D., was elected speaker of the House of Delegates at the American Medical Association, the Buffalo, New York internist was presented with a box containing glass shards. With becoming the AMA’s first female HOD speaker, Dr. Neilsen had truly broken the glass ceiling.
That story contrasts sharply with what happened 70 years earlier in Dallas, Texas. A year after the country’s first female orthopedic surgeon, Ruth Jackson, M.D., started her practice, the newly founded American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) opened its membership to all practicing orthopedic surgeons — except Dr. Jackson. It wasn’t until four years later, when Dr. Jackson passed the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery’s newly instituted exam, that she was admitted to the AAOS.
Dr. Jackson’s struggle paled in comparison to the discrimination and ostracism the country’s first female physician, Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., faced en route to receiving her medical degree in 1849 from Geneva Medical College. Yet it illustrates how little the acceptance environment had changed by the early 20th century.
Perhaps the most telling story about how things have changed in the intervening years for women in medicine — and what the future holds — lies in two statistics that made headlines last November. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported that for the first time in history, women made up the majority of medical school applicants, and that the number of black women applicants exceeded 1,900 — a 10 percent increase over the previous year. And in 2002, 40 percent of all residents were women, a statistic that clearly supports the prediction that by 2010, approximately 40 percent of U.S. physicians will be women.
In certain specialties, especially primary care, women have made large strides. Women comprised only 20 percent of pediatricians in 1970, for example, but accounted for 49 percent in 2002. In obstetrics and gynecology, the growth of women in the field is even more dramatic: from 5 percent in 1970 to more than 70 percent three decades later.
Despite how the overall numbers picture is changing, women in specialties such as orthopedics are still relative rarities — in 2001, less than 9 percent of orthopedic surgery residents were female. Yet times are changing, if slowly, even in this traditionally male-dominated specialty. Sybil Biermann, M.D., associate professor of orthopedics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who has conducted research on orthopedics work force trends, is buoyed by the changes she has witnessed in the field since she completed her residency in the early 1990s. She is also well aware that much work is needed to increase recruitment in orthopedics and other surgical specialties.
“In my field there is tremendous opportunity for women, and there really are no obstacles in terms of gender bias when you are at the level of being considered for a residency program,” says Dr. Biermann. “The issue is that we’re not recruiting women into the field early enough.”
Dr. Biermann, who joined the University of Michigan faculty 11 years ago, credits the tremendous support she received from the department chair at the University of Iowa as one of the chief factors in her decision to pursue orthopedics. “I was fortunate to be in a program that had trained more women than perhaps any other program at the time, and that really helped to create a supportive environment,” Dr. Biermann recalls.
Orthopedics has been considered one of the last “holdouts” in the surgical specialties, as regards the presence of women in the field. In general surgery, for example, nearly one-fourth of residents are women; and even in neurosurgery, another traditionally male-dominated field, women account for approximately 10 percent of residents, according to the most recent data from the American Medical Association and research conducted by Dr. Biermann for her article published in the December 2003 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. Changes are also occurring in thoracic surgery, where women residents made up nearly 7 percent of the total in 2001, compared to only 0.61 percent in 1970; and in urology, which saw the percentage of female residents increase from 0.27 percent to 12.6 percent over that three-decade period. The most dramatic increase is seen in ophthalmology, in which there has been a tenfold increase — from 3.6 percent in 1970 to 32.4 percent in 2001 — in women in training programs.
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-03-04 01:27
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