Organizational Culture Use the Job Characteristics Model

Organizational Culture

Use the job characteristics model to explain why female MDs are working fewer hours

The most common job characteristics model used to explain why female doctors work fewer hours than their male colleagues is that female individuals retain the disproportionate burden of child and house care, in contrast to their male professional colleagues in the medical profession. Thus, to maintain some semblance of order in the home, and to greater balance home and family life, female doctors are statistically likely to be working fewer hours, as more and more female doctors enter the medical profession. As the medical profession's women no longer is made up only of die-hard future doctors, determined to sacrifice everything in their personal lives for the sake of work, they are less apt to work as many hours to retain that balance.

Another, related, corollary explanation is that female doctors desire, at the expense of professional ambitions, to remain home with their children for more hours than their male colleagues. The demands of motherhood are not only practical but also emotional, and many women find, after having children, that they wish to spend time with their children as well as to work as doctors to their fullest extent. But different employment prospects in the workforce and workplace of medicine have additionally made more flexible hours and opportunities a reality for women doctors who wish to pursue a less hour hungry model of medicine, and opportunities within the medical climate create altered patterns of behavior.

Now, clinical opportunities exist for those who wish to labor as part time practitioners. The medical field is growing increasingly specialized and requiring fewer hours in those specializations, and thus attracting more women to the medical ranks. But also, the practice of medicine in simply growing more balanced in its outlook. Producing a hose of male, macho doctors who pride themselves on working quadruple shifts during their formative years of internship with a kind of masculine pride, simply produces burnout, doctors whom are alienated from their patients, their families, from their children, and from non-medically oriented society as a whole because of the extraordinary lifestyle demands of doctors.

A doctor is not simply a pair of hands, he or she must also be a human being of quality, and a human being must not be measured by the amount of hours they work, solely and purely. Women, it might be suggested, understand this fact better than men. For instance, although there is no hard and fast rule between experience and praxis, in contrast, women with children might make better obstetricians in general, whom are more comfortable with the experiences with their patients, from their greater, more flexible and balanced life experiences, even if they work fewer total hours than their male colleagues. Even individuals who have health complaints themselves such as the doctor featured in the article may exhibit a greater understanding of medicine, than those who are healthy enough only and work the maximum number of hours for the maximum amount of time, as demanded by their competitive and rising colleagues in the profession.

Thus, the introduction of women to the workforce may feminize medicine for the better, as a whole, as women work more hours. Also, women doctors feel allowed to work fewer hours not just because they have children but because they see themselves as human beings as well as doctors who are not defined solely by their incomes and professional prowess -- again, a good thing for the profession, rather than to its overall detriment. Quality time, as opposed to quantity time may not only be true of the practice of child rearing, but also the practice of medical practice and training.

How might you redesign the work of an MD to decrease stress and burnout?

Decreasing the hours of a shift by a resident or intern is one key way at the early stages for a doctor to decrease burnout. Yet even before medical school, requiring English and psychology classes is one way to create a more balanced job applicant pool for future medical practitioners. Encouraging medical schools to choose candidates who have a life outside of science and medicine, and seek a life outside of medicine and science is vitally important to diversifying the profession. Increased specialization upon the part of doctors decreases the burden of time on general practitioners, as does healthy support from registered nurses, experienced and well-trained physicians assistances, and even clerical staff able to handle burdensome social services bureaucratic demands that sap time and energy from the actual practice of medicine.