Women prefer female doctors, but urology has one of the largest gender gaps in medicine
MONDAY, Aug. 22, 2016 (HealthDay News) — There are far too few female urologists to meet a growing demand, according to a report published online recently in The Journal of Urology.
Researchers analyzed patient data from 2003 to 2012 for 6,166 urologists across the United States. Women represented 54.4 percent of patients for female urologists, and 32.5 percent for male urologists.
Of an estimated 9,600 U.S. urologists, between 8 and 12 percent are women, according to the study. The number of female urologists did increase from 34 in 1981 to 512 in 2009, and the percentage of female urology residents rose from 5 percent in 1989 to 23 percent in 2011.
“The findings of this study highlight important characteristics of gender inequality and imbalance in the urology work force,” the authors write. “As the number of women physicians going into urology grows, increasing attention to practice pattern discrepancies and gender biases is needed to better appreciate how these disparities will shape the clinical landscape.”
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