Female Physicians: Balancing Career and Family

Abstract

Dr. Verlander is a former Child Psychiatry Fellow at the University of ColoradoHealth Sciences Center (UCHSC,Denver, Colorado. Address correspondence toDr. Verlander, GeneralDelivery, Silverthorne, CO 80498; gleseann@yahoo.com (E-mail). Copyright 2004 Academic Psychiatry. Finding an acceptable balance between career and family is a difficult challenge for many physicians. Medicine is a profession in which dedication to the wellbeing of others is of paramount importance. Careers in medicine historically demanded a selfless emphasis on caring for one’s patients, sometimes at the expense of one’s marriage, children, and personal life. Such a skewed focus worked more easily in the past when the vast majority of physicians were men. When male physicians spent long hours at work or traveling to meetings, their wives were home to run the household and care for the children. As women entered themedical field in increasing numbers, however, the tensions between career and family became more prominent. In trying to balance personal and professional responsibilities, female physicians face a difficult task in striving to “have it all.” As a physician and single mother of four children, I know that it can be done successfully, but there are many challenges that female physicians must confront in balancing their multiple roles as physician, mother, and spouse. The number of females pursuing careers in medicine is steadily increasing. In 1997, women constituted 43% of medical students in the United States and 22% of practicing physicians (1). In 2001, those numbers reached 45.8% for female medical students and 28% for female academic medical faculty (2). Women are expected to comprise 30% of practicing doctors by the year 2010 (3), and 50% by the year 2040 (4). Despite the dramatic surge in the number of female physicians, hospitals and medical centers have moved slowly to provide support for women who pursue medical careers while managing families and raising children (5–7). The difficulties of balancing family and medicine affect women’s choices of specialty (8), advancement in academic medicine (9), health (4, 10), and decisions regarding whether to have children. Professional women in many families remain responsible for the majority of domestic and child-related duties (11–13), which makes it difficult to devote the necessary hours at work to obtain promotions and tenure. Most medical institutions furthermore remain oriented toward traditional families of the past, rather than today’s dual-career parents, with rare availability of onsite daycare and little opportunity for creative scheduling or job-sharing.