Doctors' Gender

A few days ago my consultant mentioned that female medical graduates outnumber the male counterparts in medical schools. Such a comment did not raise much of an eyebrow until my attention was caught by a recent study which found that male medical consultants, on average, completed 160 more episodes of care each year than their female colleagues in the United Kingdom.

Well, I dare say you can guess what happened and how people responded. From the viewpoint of quantity - which was always the focus of the economists, accountants and people at management level alike - these figures represent a setback, not to mention the females doctors juggling the roles of childbearing and spending time with their infants.

Ruminating upon this, my thoughts turn to the debate (or riddle) that male and female doctors can be equal. That reminds us the criticism that the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus increases the division between the sexes. In a similar vein, can't we see each gender as doctors and not by gender?

Don't ask me why, but when a female patient requests to be seen by a female doctor, the evidence for the fundamental difference between male and female doctors is overwhelming. And, think of a doctor scurrying between patient consultation at a gallop in the clinic, squeezing meagre time for teaching, leaving little (if any) for patient's question. How many times have you seen a male doctor - I won't deny it - like this?

The accompanied editorial in the British Medical Journal this week further reminds us that, after controlling for all demographic factors, male doctors in the United States were three times more likely than women to receive complaints and get involved in litigation. Another frequently cited meta-analysis (based on 23 observational studies of communication between doctors and patients and three large studies from doctors' own reports) in 2002 reported that female doctors spend more time with their patients, talk with them more, engaged in more emotionally focused talk, seek patient input more actively, and that their patients speak more.

Chances are male and female doctors can never be equal, other than the fact that male and female doctors are equally important for their complementary roles to medicine.