{"id":367,"date":"2015-09-21T07:45:34","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T07:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/?p=367"},"modified":"2015-09-21T11:55:55","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T11:55:55","slug":"advancing-women-in-emergency-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feminem.org\/2015\/09\/21\/advancing-women-in-emergency-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"Advancing Women in Emergency Medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"
It’s been an interesting month for women in medicine. On September 15, JAMA published a large database study\u00a0and\u00a0a letter with a brief report,\u00a0both describing disturbing\u00a0gender disparities in medicine. On September 17, Medscape published results of a survey of over 3,000 women physicians, showing that over\u00a025% of the women had no interest<\/em>\u00a0in pursuing leadership positions at all. \u00a0Data like this would normally have depressed me. However, as I read the studies and processed their results, I actually felt hopeful.<\/p>\n First, let’s discuss the aforementioned studies.<\/p>\n The large JAMA study\u00a0is an analysis of a database of over 90,000 physicians, using the outcome measure of full professor rank.\u00a0 Women were found to be substantially less likely to achieve the rank of full professor, even after correcting for age, time since residency completion, specialty, number of publications, NIH grants, and other measures of research productivity, challenging the enduring belief that women are not reaching rank of professor due to time spent in medicine or other personal factors. The research letter describes how\u00a0median start-up packages for men engaged in basic science are a whopping 67% greater than those of women: $980,000 vs $585,000!<\/p>\n As a side note<\/em>, ever notice how large the burden of proof for gender disparities is? If you took all the studies demonstrating gender bias in medicine and instead made them about a disease, there would be no question of the attributable risk of that disease<\/em>. Instead, there are recurring arguments about the potential confounders of the association between gender and career success in medicine and the various means by which women are choosing lesser careers and slower advancement. But still, I think this issue provides a blow to the skeptics.<\/p>\n Then there’s\u00a0the Medscape study. Medscape surveyed 3,285\u00a0women physicians to understand their attitudes towards attaining leadership\/ partnership positions. \u00a0A leadership position\u00a0was defined as holding a partner position or academic or organizational title. Of those not in leadership positions, more than 50% expressed no interest in ever<\/em> becoming leaders, despite thinking that “women leaders are important.” \u00a0How could this be? \u00a0Why would women who think female leadership is important in medicine, not think it was important for them to be leaders? \u00a0The answer was work- life balance. Despite the fact that the leaders were found to be happier at their jobs and equally as satisfied with their personal lives, the perception<\/em> is that female leaders in medicine must sacrifice some element of their personal happiness to get there.<\/p>\n So, why, after reading these\u00a0articles, was I not depressed at the state of women in medicine today? \u00a0It is because in Emergency Medicine, we are actively and systematically working to change things.<\/p>\n Just to take a slice of this year:<\/p>\n Awesome, no? And I know this list is only\u00a0the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0There are men and women out there who are, no doubt, working on initiatives and projects that are off my\u00a0radar.\u00a0While the JAMA articles are a refreshing wake-up call — and I am excited to watch the reverberations from them — as I read them, I felt super proud that none of this is news to this group. I know some of this work can be extremely time-consuming, sometimes tedious, sometimes frustrating but in aggregate, I am convinced we are changing the face of emergency medicine, and likely doing it well ahead of most other specialties.Keep up the wonderful, inspired, brilliant work. I am proud to have all of you as colleagues.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n References:<\/p>\n It’s been an interesting month for women in medicine. On September 15, JAMA published a large database study\u00a0and\u00a0a letter with a brief report,\u00a0both describing disturbing\u00a0gender disparities in medicine. On September 17, Medscape published results of a survey of over 3,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[29],"coauthors":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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