Service matters more than doctors’ gender

YOUR piece on the feminisation of medicine (Irish Examiner, August 25) was a welcome contribution to a long overdue public debate, and it certainly reflected the ‘tensions’ between the old and the new guard.

However, while issues of ‘superiority,’ status and salary may be of all-consuming interest to doctors of both genders, they are probably of little interest to most of your readers.

What matters most to them, I suspect, is not the ‘ability’ of their doctors, but the ‘stability’ of their medical service. Thus, if all the highly capable women who recently graduated in medicine are still practising full-time in Ireland in 20 years’ time, we can be reassured of a superior service.