Women leaving medicine - a wealth of untapped training and experience?
The third bullet point in the Women Leaving Medicine Manifesto strikes at the heart of my real concern.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
“Women leaving medicine represent a great wealth of training and experience that must be tapped, to continue to benefit society”.
When women leave their time-gobbling medical practices or drop out after a grueling residency, society loses out.
While families — children, elderly parents, siblings — may benefit (as may the physician herself even if she isn’t caring for a family), the huge investment of time, energy and money that went into a medical education and establishing a practice is wasted.
Or so it seems to the onlooker, and even to the physician herself who is often riddled with guilt and confusion.
This loss is most unfortunate in a time when the healthcare system is straining at the seams and talk of impending physician shortages is widespread.
Just what’s at stake here?
- the physician’s mental, emotional and physical well-being
- the security and integrity of her family — the infant still forming attachments, the toddler in search of new independence knowing that his mommy is there to back him up, the elementary school kid struggling with homework, the adolescent craving support as she navigates the minefields of middle and high school, her mom’s early-onset dementia dad is having to cope with, her dad’s colon cancer that is causing mom and her siblings to fall apart
- the physician’s financial situation should she choose to quit medical practice - unrelenting medical school debt repayment, loss of income to the family
- the health and welfare of a society that is under stress due to overwork, underemployment, poor lifestyle choices, increasingly sedentary occupations and leisure choices, information overload … you name it!
In this blog, I hope to explore along with you, what opportunities we have as individual women physicians and as a community or society to address this problem.
I guess my first questions are:
- Is there indeed a problem?
- Do the women leaving medicine really care if their ‘brain trusts’ and years of experience lie fallow for the years they take off?
- And if so, how should we respond?
What are your thoughts?
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- Americans will need doctors but physicians are leaving primary care (kevinmd.com)
- The Bureaucratic Doctor (lifescript.com)
