As National Women Physician Day was commemorated on February 3, Dr Harini Sreedaran, Consultant Neonatologist and Paediatrician, Mazumdar Shaw Medical centre, Narayana Health City highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic has made life much more challenging for per peers on the professional, personal, and family fronts
National Women Physician Day was commemorated on February 3 and like in other fields, women in the medical field also do have to face and overcome difficulties. In fact, the pandemic has made life much more challenging. The challenges faced are three-fold, professional, personal, and issues concerning their family.
The SARS COV2 pandemic has extended into its third year at present. What’s unique with this situation is it’s unpredictably each year.
On the personal front, the huge scale of mortality and morbidity that physicians have to witness can take a toll on the mental health of the physician. To work day in and day out in such an environment for extended hours with lack of regular sleep and food can be very tiring. They also feel very demotivated, as many enter the medical field with an intention to cure people, and the inability to do so is depressing. Seeing so much sickness first hand also makes one worry what if your family is in a similar situation tomorrow. At the same time, there is a constant guilt of taking the infection home. According to the American journal of psychiatry, in general the rates of suicide and depression are higher in women than the general population and also higher in physicians as compared to the general population and this has increased during the current pandemic.
A lot of women have had to temporarily give up their profession and career aspirations. This is due to multiple reasons from feeling guilty to being scared of transferring the infection at home to resistance from the family side to continue work in the medical field as one may get in contact with COVID patients and above all due to lack of child care facilities in the advent of contracting the virus as they have a smaller child or elderly parents at home. Due to the multiple lock-downs over the course of the past two years and lack of domestic help at the home front, there have been situations where the women have been in charge of handling both their stressful responsibilities at work and at home, compromising on their personal health and wellbeing. Also, in those instances where both the spouses are in medical field, women have voluntarily stepped down from their profession in order to reduce the risk associated with the current pandemic and handle the situation at the home front. In case of volunteering to do extra hours at work, many women are held back by their responsibilities at home and thus feel guilty of underperforming in a crisis.
On the professional front, there is a relative lack of job opportunities, with many smaller hospitals turning into exclusive COVID hospitals with certain fields requiring more professionals and other fields requiring lesser. Women in some instances have had to compromise on their renumeration due to the overall slump in the economy. Many women post their maternity leave have not returned to work due to the current situation. According to a recent article in the journal ASA Monitor by Stephanie et al., a lot of women who have held temporary, contract and non-tenure posts have reported job loss and those continuing have had a negative impact on both their academic performance in terms of publications and their clinical performance, which was absent for men in the same field and this in turn has affected their chances at promotion and led to an increase in the rate of women physician burnout according to the same article.
On a personal front, while I have been very lucky to have a very supportive family and a workplace throughout the pandemic, this has not been the same for many women physicians. The current pandemic has taken a significant toll on women physicians and many of their families. Hospitals and medical workplaces are now recognising this and doing their best to help out in the current situation. I am hopeful that with efforts from all the stakeholders the challenges faced by women physicians will be addressed, and more women will be keen to enter the profession.