Medical schools hit by outbreak of equal opportunity

For the first time, more women than men have begun to train as doctors at UK medical schools.

A record 2,495 women began their training this autumn. The colleges, once men-only bastions, recruited just 2,158 men, according to figures being finalised by the Higher Education Funding Council.

The highest ever women-to-men ratio reflects the increasing success of girls at A-level science subjects. It is predicted that the proportion of women entrants will continue to rise. In some colleges the ratio of women to men is almost two to one, a far cry from the days when a woman had to dress as a man to study medicine, or qualify overseas.

But there is now concern that unless the overall number of doctors is increased, there will be a staffing crisis in five years.

The argument is that in the years after qualifying women are six or seven times more likely to work part-time as men, and that as the proportion of women doctors increases, so will the numbers of part-time doctors, requiring more to be trained.

"Because more than half the intake of medical schools are now female, there cannot possibly be enough British-trained doctors to fill jobs as GPs or hospital doctors in the future, and I believe there is a timebomb that will explode in about five years time," said John Crosby, a GP from Taunton, Somerset, who raised the issue in the British Medical Association Review.

"I believe the Government has got to do something or we are going to have problems," he said yesterday.

Women doctors, long discriminated against, point out however that despite the increasing number of female doctors, there are still very few in top jobs.

There are, for instance, fewer than 3,000 women consultants compared to 13,000 men. Some specialties, including orthopaedics and general surgery, have the lowest rates.

Many of those women that do make it to the top face a difficult time. Sian Caiach, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon, who detailed her experiences in the British Medical Journal, says that only 2 per cent of consultants in her specialty are women.

"My own experiences as a surgeon would hardly encourage other members of my sex," she said. "The worst episode occurred in 1991 when I was a career registrar in Scotland expecting my first child, and my professor informed me that I would not be regarded as a doctor in training for the purposes of maternity employment rights. I received my P45 in the post. After a lengthy appeal I was reinstated. When I returned to work I was not made welcome and no apology was forthcoming."

At the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff there are 125 female first-year students and 68 male. "There is no selection bias. We set the standards for entry here and it so happened that these are the people who met them and were successful," said a spokesman.