In the US, one area of medicine that demands both surgery and medical
skills, involves greater malpractice costs, and which puts practitioners
on call around the clock (except as mitigated through team practice) is
obstetrics and gynecology.  In long experience with this specialty,
numbers of women have increased to the point where we have very few male
residents, in some years none at all. Ironically, structures to provide
pregnancy leave or time for child care, however, are no better here than
elsewhere in medicine. Years ago, I sent the Hastings Center Report a
case to be commented on involving a young maternal-fetal medicine fellow
whose first pregnancy became a high risk pregnancy two months before
due.  She could no longer do the "scut" work expected of fellows and had
to go on bedrest for about a month, during which she wrote an article
eventually published by one of the attendings, came back and eventually
gave birth to a healthy infant.  When she asked her mentor if she could
add her vacation time to the 4 weeks she had after the birth, he refused
and said:  "Pregnancy, after all, is elective."  As with another case I
sent there, the journal found the case too unbelievable and asked me to
change it so that it was more credulous. In its "easer-to-believe"
fictionalized version, the case was eventually published under the title
"The Pregnant Fellow."

Best to all,
mary mahowald


I agree, it is breath taking. My observations about why women do or
don't go into particular areas of medicine (diagnostic/procedural
cardiology, orthopaedics are amongst the stereotypes) are not that these
areas are 'demanding' in ways that women can't cope with, but that
factors like entrenched misogyny, reductionst and mechanistic
approaches, rigid training programs, lack of family friendly policies
and the potential tedium of the work are off putting. It is
disappointing to hear these kind of comments from a woman who is
presumably in a position of power such that she might move to challenge
some of the assumptions and make some real changes, rather than follow
the old boys line. Wendy


Wendy Rogers
Associate Professor Medical Ethics & Health Law
Department of Medical Education
Flinders University, Adelaide
08 8204 3132

Practical Ethics for General Practice
W A Rogers, and A J Braunack-Mayer
OUP 2004: ISBN 0-19-852504-4


-----Original Message-----
From: Feminist Approaches to Bioethics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Birgitta N. Sujdak Mackiewicz
Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 5:54 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BBC: Women docs 'weakening' medicine

I'm quite simply speechless at this article for so
many reasons.  I presume that many others are as well
judging from the silence on the list.

Birgitta
--- Lee Hall <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/1/hi/health/3527184.stm
>