A new report, called Women Doctors: Making a Difference, identifies the barriers preventing female doctors from reaching senior positions and sets out how to address them.
It’s been produced by the National Working Group on Women in Medicine, which was set up in the wake of the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report in 2006. Sir Liam Donaldson’s report identified a shortage of women in leadership roles in the medical profession despite outnumbering men as medical undergraduates.
Donaldson expressed support for the report’s recommendations and said the Department of Health would consider each of them. Here’s a summary of the key recommendations:
1. Improve access to mentoring and career advice
In the next round of contract negotiation there should be an explicit facility for appropriately trained and skilled doctors (usually consultants) to undertake mentoring or career counselling as a programmed activity within their job plan.
To facilitate accessing mentoring or career management support, the future commissioners of medical education should maintain a register of all doctors who are skilled and are willing to undertake these tasks and make it more accessible to other doctors.
2. Encouraging women in leadership
Appointments to NHS, academic and clinical committees and boards should be advertised widely and have a transparent and democratic process rather than simply an appointment by nomination.
Committees should be encouraged to develop their ways of working to enable greater participation by doctors who are parents or carers.
There should be increased access for women to the committees and boards of major medical institutions, including the medical schools, postgraduate deaneries, medical royal colleges, NHS trusts and other NHS bodies. The Equality and Human Rights Commission should consider auditing the appointments process for all such posts.
3. Improve access to part-time working and flexible training
The postgraduate deaneries should maintain a list of doctors wishing to train part time in a slot‑share arrangement.
NHS Employers should develop guidance for meeting the costs of continuing professional development, including for those who are working less than full time.
The development of credentialling should be expedited, and there should be full recognition by the medical Royal Colleges that time alone does not indicate competence to practise independently.
The aspirational quota for part-time training should be abandoned in favour of a needs-assessed availability by strategic health authorities (SHAs). The newly formed Centre for Workforce Intelligence should be commissioned by each SHA to provide this needs assessment on a regional basis, and provision should be made to meet it.
4. Ensure that the arrangements for revalidation are clear and explicit
The GMC and the appropriate medical royal colleges should ensure that they have a clear set of re-licensing and recertification standards and assessment processes in place for doctors who have taken time out of training or the profession to return to work.
Responsible officers should coordinate refresher training for those who have taken time out of training to meet these standards. There should be funding for this within the NHS budget.
Trusts should offer ‘back-to-work’ and ‘taster’ sessions where those who have taken a career break can shadow working doctors to re-familiarise the doctor with procedures and work patterns, so that they are confident on return.
5. Women should be encouraged to apply for the Clinical Excellence Awards
The Advisory Committee for Clinical Excellence Awards (ACCEA) should provide greater feedback to applicants and advice as to where additional development might be necessary, and develop a network of mentors.
Selection panels should be gender balanced wherever possible; due consideration should be given to part time applicants, and ACCEA’s processes should be monitored for gender equality.
6. Ensure that the medical workforce planning apparatus takes account of the increasing number of women in the medical profession
NHS Medical Education England (NHS MEE) and the Centre for Workforce Intelligence should ensure that workforce models for the future clearly delineate the effect of a rising number of women in the workforce so that appropriate advice for the workforce planning apparatus can be given.
7. Improve access to childcare
The Conference of Postgraduate Medical Deans and the Department of Health should consider whether the model such as that in place in the North Western Deanery, which commissions a lead employer for all specialty trainees in the deanery, would be a practical and desirable model in the new education commissioner/provider landscape. The additional benefit of better facilitating access to government assistance for maternity benefits and childcare of this model is clear.
Postgraduate deaneries or their lead employers should plan ahead for the childcare needs of their trainees and facilitate arrangements between a trainee and the trusts during their rotation for access to childcare provision.
Trusts should appoint a childcare coordinator within their human resources department if they have not yet done so. Childcare coordinators should develop internet resources to act as both an information resource and message boards on local childcare options, including emergency cover.
Hospital-based childcare should move to extended opening hours.
The DoH should explore the costs and benefits of doctors who are parents paying for full-time or part-time childcare as a value-for-money solution for enabling doctors to progress their careers. On the basis of this analysis the DoH should submit a case to the Treasury to allow doctors to pay for childcare from their gross earnings. In addition, it should establish whether any central funding might be available for childcare assistance.
8. Improve support for carers
All postgraduate deaneries or their nominated lead employers and NHS trusts should have a lead person responsible for supporting carers.
9. Strenuous efforts should be made to ensure that these recommendations are enacted through the identification of champions
Trusts should identify a non-executive director to have responsibility at a local level for improving working patterns, giving advice and handling complaints. The director should work closely with a lead consultant for workforce planning.
Read the full report.
Tags: CEAs, Equality, Flexible trainees, Leadership
