Perception of Female Doctors\' Clinical Practice and Teaching in Anaesthesia and other Medical Specialties by Medical Students in Nigeria

Abstract

More women are in medicine. The study aimed at examining medical students' perception of female doctors' clinical practice and teaching as it relates to their gender. The study's design was simple randomized using well-structured questionnaires. One hundred and sixtyone medical students with a mean age of 24.4 ± 2 years were involved in the study. Gender bias was shown generally by 68.9 % of them with male doctors being favoured (42.9%). Specialty preferences significantly favoured male surgeons (76 ie50.3%) and female paediatricians (67 ie 44.9%) (x2 = 10.78 and 6.62 respectively, p< 0.05 for both). Preference for female anaesthetists (9.3%) was better than has been reported (0.69%).Majority of students (61.5%) showed indifference to doctors gender as it relates to lecture delivery. The reasons adduced for these include socio-cultural misconceptions, gender concordance and sensitivity. We conclude that female doctors should improve their practice style and content and veer into male dominated specialties to clarify these misconceptions.

Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Research Vol. 5 (1) 2006: pp. 7-12