Women in medicine

SIR – When you work part-time in medicine, what really happens is that you work the number of hours that those outside medicine would consider to be full-time.

A “half day” for a GP or hospital doctor could mean starting at 7.30am and finishing at 4pm. Or working three days but cramming 40 hours into those days. Hospital consultants typically work at least five hours per week entirely unpaid beyond their contracted hours.

This isn’t just a conversation about part-time working, however; it is about who is doing the part-time work. Three quarters of the 1.3 million staff in the NHS are women: 55 per cent of GPS and 37 per cent of consultants are women. Women make up 51 per cent of the UK population; they also bear the majority of childcare and elderly relative care, of household admin and of volunteering. Medicine is a highstress career, and burn-out is at an all-time high.

The British Medical Association recently launched its Sexism in Medicine report, which shows that sexism and gender bias is disproportionately experienced by women: 91 per cent reported that they had faced patronising comments and judgmental attitudes, and had been overlooked for career progression.

In spite of 46 per cent of Ukregistered doctors being women, and a pattern of women medical school entrants outnumbering men, being a doctor is seen as a male role.

As representatives of the BMA Network of Elected Women, we are aware that we have got a societal problem about the way women in medicine are perceived. This needs to change.

The system itself must also change to bring: investment in recruitment and retention of doctors, in premises and in IT; a commitment from the Government to tackle the bureaucracy and workload of doctors; and an immediate campaign to change the rhetoric from “failure” to “functioning extremely well despite the extreme pressure we find ourselves under”.

Dr Tamsin Holland Brown

Paediatrician, Cambridgeshire

Dr Fay Wilson

GP, Birmingham & Solihull

Dr Fariah Khan

Psychiatry trainee and GP, London and 47 others; see telegraph.co.uk