Women in medicine are on the rise. In the 2021 summer semester, only around twice as many women as men applied for a place in human medicine. Does the higher proportion of women exacerbate the emergency in medicine? The federal government does not think so. She rejects a gender quota for medical studies. Although more women study medicine, they hardly hold top positions at the clinics.
Most of the medical students are female
In the 2021 summer semester, 12,513 women and 6,415 men applied for a place in human medicine. This emerges from a response by the federal government to a small request from the AfD parliamentary group. The figures come from the Universities’ portal. Accordingly, there are a total of 23,846 applicants for 1,687 NC study places, i.e. eleven applicants for one study place.
Are more women in medicine exacerbating the supply shortage in the US? The Federal Government’s Patient Commissioner, Claudia Schmid, recently brought this question into play. She called for a male and diverse quota for medical studies. The AfD parliamentary group also referred to this request in its small question. The argument: patients would identify as male, female and diverse. Accordingly, they should also have the opportunity to be treated by male, female, or doctors who identify themselves as diversely.
As the federal government announced in its answer, it sees no need for a gender quota in medicine. There is no evidence that a higher proportion of female students would lead to supply problems. In addition, the allocation of study places is the responsibility of the federal states. And the federal government has no influence on this.
Hardly any women in top medical positions
Overall, human medicine is still one of the most popular subjects in the US. This is shown by an evaluation of the Medic Mind application portal. Among the female first-year students, medicine is in third place of the favored courses of study, after business administration in first place and American studies in second place. For men, however, medicine is only in eighth place. First place also goes to business administration, followed by mechanical engineering and Computer science.
But even though more women choose to study medicine, they rarely hold top clinical positions. A current study by the American Medical Association draws attention to this. The study examined 13 clinical subjects and two institutes at the 35 university hospitals. According to this, men occupy 87 percent of management positions in university medicine. The nationwide proportion of women rose by just three percent between 2019 and 2021.
The highest proportion of women is found in New England and St. Paul, where 23 percent of the medical management staff are women. At the bottom of the list are the university clinics in New York, Minneapolis, and Bloomington. There is not a single management position occupied by a woman.
That is what constitutes good further training to become a specialist
Have you successfully completed your medical studies and now you have to become a specialist? How do you actually become a specialist and why should you train to become a specialist at all? Here you can find out which factors and framework conditions are important so that medical activity and further training can be easily reconciled and how further training and hospitals must be organized so that nothing stands in the way of a successful specialist medical degree.
Further education: why a specialist?
In order to be or become a specialist, you must have successfully completed your medical degree beforehand. For instance, in case you want to become a dentist, consulting dentistry interview tutors may help you in pursuing you career in the field. Then you can complete further training to become a specialist and specialize in a field of medicine.
To become a specialist means that you are employed as an assistant doctor in a clinic and learn the subject until you have acquired a great deal of knowledge about it and can take an exam in it. You can choose yourself which subject you want to become a specialist in.
But: Of course, you don’t have to become a specialist and you can also work as an assistant doctor in the hospital without further training. However, you are not allowed to carry out certain activities without a specialist doctor’s title – e.g., no contracts with the health insurance companies, as you are not a contract doctor. That means that you don’t get any money from the health insurance company when treating patients. This makes it difficult to open your own practice. And in the clinic, too, as a rule, you only become a senior or chief physician if you have a specialist title. So, if you want to become something different than an assistant doctor, you should consider becoming a specialist.
The path to becoming a specialist
To become a specialist, you have to work and study for at least five to six years in the field in which you want to become a specialist. What you have to learn for this is precisely regulated in the respective further training regulations. After these five or six years you can take an exam and receive the title. The State Medical Association determines what exactly you have to learn during this time. Each federal state has its own medical association. The training regulations can be found on the respective homepage. There it is precisely recorded what you have to master in order to register for the specialist examination. There are also periods of time that you have to prove – for example twelve months on a certain station as well as content that you have learned and practiced there during that time.
The choice of the clinic: In which hospital can you do further train as a specialist?
Not every specialist is allowed to train young specialists. Bosses and trainers must be authorized to train for this. These are checked by the State Medical Association to determine whether they can do exactly what is required of them and specifically for this specialty and whether everything is offered in the clinic so that other doctors can be trained well.