Full-time women general practitioners--an invaluable asset

Abstract

It has been said that women doctors do not fulfil the same role as men doctors in general practice. This is inaccurate as previous studies of workload in general practice have not excluded from the analyses women principals who are part time, that is, have a less than full profit share at parity. In a postal questionnaire to 501 women principals 308 (62%) replied, of whom 143 (46%) were full time with respect to profit share. Respondents were asked to record aspects of workload over a four-week period for themselves and three of their full-time men partners. Analysis of their responses showed that they did an equal workload to their full-time men partners in terms of number of surgeries, length of surgeries and number of home visits. Equal numbers of full-time women did out-of-hours work as their men partners and the number of nights and weekends on-call as well as use of deputies were similar. The analysis also showed that full-time women did more specialized clinics than men, thus emphasizing the special role of women doctors in preventive care.