Female physicians choose subspecialties

Concerns among healthcare analysts that the majority of pediatricians in training now are women and that this might cause shortages in the future in pediatric subspecialties appear to be almost entirely unfounded, a University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, study concludes.

Unlike in the past, women pediatricians increasingly are likely to enter subspecialties, researchers discovered, saying that the news is reassuring. "This shows that women are breaking into the glass ceiling in more areas," asserts Michelle Mayer, research associate at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. "Pediatrics appears to be a field with great opportunities for women.

"For nine of the 16 pediatric medical subspecialties we studied, the percentages of board-certified women were significantly greater among younger pediatricians than among older ones. Subspecialties that remain predominately male among the younger group include cardiology, critical care medicine, gastroenterology, and pulmonary and sports medicine."

According to the American Board of Pediatrics, the number of women choosing to become pediatricians is rising. In 2003, data showed that 63% of pediatricians seeking certification were women. Because female physicians in past decades were more likely to practice general pediatrics than to work in subspecialties, concerns developed about the future supply of doctors in some disciplines.

In her research, Mayer reviewed 17 pediatric subspecialties and found women dominated several, including adolescent medicine, developmental and behavioral medicine, and neurodevelopment. More than 70% of practitioners in those areas were women. Mayer also found significant increases in the number of female doctors who chose to work in cardiology, critical care, endocrinology, gastroenterology, hematology, oncology, infectious disease, neonatology, and nephrology.

"Women are increasingly represented among pediatric medical subspecialties," Mayer notes. "The few remaining male-dominated pediatric medical subspecialties may need to factor the changes in the composition of the overall pediatric workforce into their recruitment strategies and manpower projections."

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