Maggie's Farm

It's been a giant cultural change in medicine. Half of medical students are women these days. Many of them are Asians.

Today, college men are beginning to consider it to be a chick profession. Including cardio-thoracic surgery. Heck, I even know a lady urologist in Boston. Why not?

Many of the young women I know are going into Emergency Medicine. If you walk into your local ER, you will see if full of cute young ER MDs. Women going into medicine today tend towards the areas where they can work definite hours for a paycheck, work part-time, and have no on-call duties. ER, Radiology, Dermatology. They want a regular paycheck, benefits, and regular hours, and do not want the burdens, stress, and risks of opening a private practice. And, as as a gender, I think we tend to be more comfortable with rules and protocols than men and thus make better employees. Male docs hate rules and enjoy defying them.

The culture of medicine is changing, for better or worse. The older male docs will say, in confidence, that medicine is  becoming "pussified." Their old school view is that medical practice is not meant to be either convenient, comfortable, or a partial dedication, but rather more like a priesthood.

Worse case, I can see a future of salaried docs happy to be working in government clinics. You patients will not like that.