Female doctor bias causing staff crisis, warn consultants

THE growing number of female doctors is causing a staffing crisis as they are avoiding jobs that involve weekend work and long hours, claim consultants.

There is also a shortage of hospital doctors because women are looking for part-time hours and opting for general practice because the hours are more family-friendly.

Figures from the Irish Medical Council show women (2,343) outnumber men (2,248) as doctors aged 20-35 for the first time.

Dr Roisín Healy, A&E consultant at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, said the feminisation of medicine was damaging.

“I do think the status of the profession goes down the more feminised it becomes, that’s a sociological given. Men still have more clout - the more masculised a profession, the more it gets, for example, in terms of attracting funding for research.”

Dr Chris Luke, director of postgraduate medicine at Cork University Hospital (CUH), warned the feminisation of medicine had significant implications.

“We have grave difficulties staffing A&E departments around the country basically because the discipline is out of hours.

“It seems to be a fact that women are making different career choices to their predecessors and by and large are opting for specialities that are not out of hours, or they are looking for part-time work.”

Dr Luke said he was seeing shortages in training for surgery, A&E and anaesthesia - which all have high on-call rates - partly attributable to women opting out of out-of-hours work.

He said implementing the Fottrell report was the only way to end the growing gender imbalance because it would replace the Leaving Certificate - where girls traditionally score higher - as the only assessment tool for entry to medical school.

However, Dr Mary Gray, a Limerick-based GP who has reviewed studies of women in medicine, said the Leaving Certificate is a fair system.

“There is no outside influence. I wouldn’t support any system that wasn’t based purely on merit. If you were to introduce a discriminatory system, making it easier for men, you are then discriminating against women.”