AHA Journals, Author Interviews, Duke, Education, Gender Differences, Heart Disease / 10.11.2015
Relatively Few Women Physicians Choose Cardiology as Career
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Pamela S. Douglas, MD, MACC, FASE, FAHA
Ursula Geller Professor of Research in Cardiovascular Disease
Duke University School of Medicine
Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Douglas: The impetus for our study was the concern that cardiology as a profession might be enhanced by greater diversity. By not attracting women in larger numbers (9% of FACCs are female), our fellowships have incomplete access to the talent pool of outstanding residents, and we do not have a diverse group of clinicians to care for our increasingly diverse patient population, or of researchers to explore potentially important health care disparities.
Our findings were twofold: first, job descriptions for men and women cardiologists are dramatically different. Men are much more likely to do invasive procedures while women are more likely to see patients and perform imaging/noninvasive tests. While there were slightly more women working part time than men this was still rare, and the difference in number of days worked was just 6, across an entire year.
The second finding was that there was a significant difference in compensation. Unadjusted, this was over $110, 000 per year; after very robust adjustment using over 100 personal, practice, job description and productivity measures, the difference was $37, 000 per year, or over a million dollars across a career. A separate independent economic analysis of wage differentials yield a similar difference of $32,000 per year.
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