Factors Affecting Women's Success in Academic and Private Practice Plastic Surgery.

Abstract

Sir: It was with great pleasure that we read the informative article by Dr. Shah et al. entitled “Factors Affecting Women’s Success in Academic and Private Practice Plastic Surgery.”1 This article should inspire all readers to think about their career choice, especially female plastic surgeons. Students may wonder where to start their career after graduation. This article helps us realize that support and mentorship, negotiation, promotion, leadership opportunities, and institutional change are the five factors that we should take into account that can be used as work satisfaction evaluation indicators. Although every coin has two sides, we should treat the choice in a more objective way. First, as Dr. Shah et al. mentioned in the article, “females need to consider timing of pregnancy, duration of maternity leave … many women wait until after residency to start families…”. However, male counterparts are full of energy and have less stress in their lives. This may be the reason why more male junior faculty have a mentor compared with women. This timing and duration lead to women lagging behind in competition for hierarchy leadership positions.2 However, after that, women catch up soon. Second, the data from the American Association of Medical Colleges showed that 15 percent of all plastic surgeons are women.1 However, in another article,3 using data collected from the American Medical Association’s Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database Access System, the authors showed that among all full-time academic faculty, there are 935 academic plastic surgeons, 181 of whom are women. This proportion is more than 15 percent, so we can conclude that more women would like to work in an academic department. Also, 77.6 percent of these academic plastic surgeons received industry funding, and most (42.46 percent) of the academic plastic surgeons are assistants. Considering the gender parity in an academic department, we can infer that women received more funding in academic departments than in private practice. As the author says, “When at the professor and chair level, women are [just as] productive as men.” Then, women would have a greater chance to receive a promotion in an academic department. Last but not least, although private practitioners earn a higher lifetime income than academic surgeons across all surgical subspecialties, academic plastic surgeons have the smallest differences of only 2 percent in lifetime revenue between full professors and private practitioners.4 This means that the financial rewards need not be taken into consideration in choosing academic or private practice. In conclusion, the five factors that the author pointed out are really the key points for female plastic surgeons. Besides, we believe women should make a choice according to their needs and personal stages, such as whether to have time flexibility for work or a mentor who can give instructions that are good for their future career. DISCLOSURE The authors do not have any commercial associations or financial disclosures that might pose or create a conflict of interest with information presented in this submitted communication. No funding was received for this communication. Jun Qi, M.DJie Luan, M.D., Ph.D.Plastic Surgery HospitalChinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking UnionMedical CollegeShijingshan DistrictBeijing, People’s Republic of China