My comments left on the National Post Site: Mike Murphy, Thursday, May 21, 2009
This pattern is not new but may have just been discovered in medicine. Feminists like to promulgate the myth of women making 71 cents on the dollar as compared to men. The reasons why this is so are also evident in this study. Women have different work patterns, take more time from work for a variety of reasons including child birth, they work fewer hours on their jobs, they commute shorter distances.
The Victim Feminist spin will be the female Doctors earn less money than men. Now that we have that out of our system we learn to deal with it. We need more Doctors enrolled in med school whether they be men or women. Life goes on. If the victim feminists start to spin this as further victimization of women - mow them down with facts. This isn't about the patriarchy suppressing females it is about personal choices....and this on the MacLean's Magazine site.
When you give a monopoly to any group or organization they have not got the right stimulation (in the private sector competition) to redress what customers are telling them. If the RCOPS is behind the shortage and not government policy they need to be removed from any form of recruitment in med schools.
The study proves that females have different work habits, work fewer hours, take more time off for family reasons. There is nothing wrong with this and it is their choice. Those of us men who have been stay-at-homes for periods to raise children understand it completely. More men are doing the same thing and much more involved in the nurturing and rearing of children.
This pattern, as found in this study, is not new but may have just been discovered in medicine. Feminists like to promulgate the myth of women making 71 cents on the dollar as compared to men. The reasons why this is so are also evident in this study. They make less money because of the factors shown in this study and it is by choice not the patriarchy as victim feminists like Antonia Zerbisias, over at the Toronto Red Star, like to spin.
The Victim Feminist talking points will be the female Doctors earn less money than men and it will be true!. But it will be for reasons of choice as it is most every where else not because of that nebulous and evil patriarchy. Now that we have that out of our system we learn to deal with it. We need more Doctors enrolled in med school whether they be men or women. Life goes on. If the victim feminists start to spin this as further victimization of women – mow them down with facts.
If restricting entries into med school is artificial then it needs to be changed by the government regulators and the money found to support it. Tax and spend McQuinty can juggle his allotments and find it easily instead of buying our votes with our own tax dollars.MJM
Published: Tuesday, May 19, 2009
The growing ranks of female physicians in Canada will slash medical productivity by the equivalent of at least 1,600 doctors within a decade, concludes a provocative new analysis of data indicating that female MDs work fewer hours on average than their male colleagues.
The paper comes just a year after a blue-chip list of medical educators publicly condemned what they called the scapegoating of women for Canada's severe doctor shortage.
Dr. Mark Baerlocher, the study's lead author, acknowledged he is tackling a thorny issue, but stressed he does not favour curbing the number of female physicians. Instead, the study calls for greater increases in medical-school enrolment to offset the phenomenon.
"It's not meant to be a negative paper in any way," he said in an interview. "It's meant to take an objective, hard look at the work-hour differences that most people would agree are very real.... You can't simply ignore it because it's a sensitive issue."
The researchers led by Dr. Baerlocher analyzed results from the 2007 National Physician Survey, a canvass of doctors sponsored by major medical associations.
The survey found that women, on average, provided 30 hours a week of direct patient care, compared to 35 from men, a result of female doctors - still burdened disproportionately with child rearing and other domestic tasks - doing less on-call work and being more likely to take leaves.
Those figures were then factored in with population numbers to calculate doctor productivity per capita.
In 2007, women made up 32% of doctors. But with female students accounting for about 60% of medical school classes now, the numbers are expected to even up within a decade. When the male-female balance reaches 50-50, overall productivity will have decreased by the equivalent of 1,588 male doctors or 1,853 female doctors, all else being equal, the study concluded.
The decreased productivity would be felt sooner in specialties already becoming female-dominated, such as pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology, the researchers say.
The long surgical wait times and lack of family physicians that plague the Canadian health care system are largely blamed on the paucity of doctors. Their ranks - now at 67,000 - would need to jump by another 20,000 to reach the average for Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.
Much of the problem is blamed on a decision by provincial governments in the early 1990s to slash medical-school enrolment, just as the ageing Baby Boom generation was producing more illness. In recent years, enrolment has been increased somewhat again.
Dr. Robert Ouellette, president of the Canadian Medical Association, said medical schools need to train even more doctors than they do now, but he steered clear of suggesting the lifestyles of female doctors are making the shortage more acute. The new generation of physicians - both male and female - tends to work fewer hours generally than older colleagues, he said. And there is evidence that women spend more time with patients, are better communicators and offer more preventive medicine.
"It's not only the hours that count - it's the quality of care that's important also," Dr. Ouellette said.
After a spate of media coverage of male and female doctors' different work patterns, the deans of medicine and other senior administrators at the universities of Toronto and Western Ontario wrote an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal last year that urged "ending the sexist blame game."
"To disparage in any way the intelligent, dedicated women ... who have chosen to devote their lives to medicine is shameful," they wrote.
Dr. Baerlocher, a radiology resident at the University of Toronto, said he agrees women should not be blamed, but lamented a general reluctance in the medical profession to examine controversial issues, such as gender differences and abortion.
"There are a lot of topics that aren't adequately studied, because it's deemed a socially sensitive topic."
National Post
tblackwell@nationalpost.com
10
A FATHERS’ rights activist cleared of causing danger during a Tyne Bridge protest has vowed to carry on campaigning.
Simon Anderton, from Real Fathers For Justice, suspended a life-size, fully-clothed dummy from the girders during his one-man demonstration high above the river.
Prosecutors claimed the 50-year-old wanted to cause massive disruption by closing the bridge and that his suicide stunt with the mannequin risked the lives of motorists driving underneath.
But a Newcastle Crown Court jury took only 20 minutes to find Mr Anderton, from Heaton, Newcastle not guilty of attempting to cause a public nuisance.
They also cleared him on judge’s direction of causing a danger to road users by hanging the 12kg dummy on a rope.
After the verdicts Mr Anderton spoke both of his relief and determination to keep going as an activist against the family court system.
“I’m over the moon,” he said. “It is a fantastic outcome. Both myself and the group feel very vindicated.
“My only aim was to highlight our cause in a peaceful way not to create disruption or upset anyone.
“Obviously we want the public behind us not against us and the support I received from people while I was on the bridge actually kept me up there longer.
“They were tooting their horns and even shouting my name. I can’t thank them – or the jury – enough.”
Mr Anderton, a grandad and father-of-five, began his protest at dawn on Father’s Day last year. He defied a serious heart condition to climb to the top of the bridge carrying the dummy he had made himself with metal and rubber tubing.
Mr Anderton hung the mannequin firstly from the centre of the bridge before agreeing to let a firefighter to move it to another spot over the footpath – closed by police who had taken a decision to allow traffic to keep flowing.
Hunger and tiredness finally drove him down more than 48 hours after starting his protest.
He then spent three days in police cells before being bailed on strict conditions, including a nightly curfew.
But after his two-day court hearing, Mr Anderton said: “I will definitely carry on campaigning.
“That is without a shadow of a doubt because the issues involved are too important.”
A spokesman for Real Fathers For Justice also welcomed the verdict.
Mike Kelly, who helped negotiate with police during the protest, said: “We feel Simon has been really supported by the people of the North East and a jury of 12 men and women have shown that this protest was acceptable.
“We would like to thank them and the public for the support they have shown.”
The jury had asked to be allowed to make a statement of their own when they returned their verdicts – an almost unprecedented move.
But Judge Christopher Prince said no statement was allowed and that it formed no part of the jury’s function.