Why Jeff, do you so often say just what I am thinking ?... Well put and Good for you...

ebay sold me my qualifications without any of the razzamatzz that you talk of! Whats that got to do with the topic -nothing ! i just felt obliged to disclose. (just in case anyone takes me seriously)

Thanks for your article about female GPs. I thought exactly the same thing when I saw the photos of the woman doctor in The Herald. I wanted to know whether when her children are a couple of years older and happy to ignore her (as mine almost are) is she going to work longer hours? The other thing I calculated is that by her early 30s she had stopped working those 24/7 jobs.

I work full time (even though I turn the phone off at 1:30 pm on a Friday, the other days I leave home at 7:50 and I'm lucky to get home between 630 and 7. Admittedly I work about 30mins from home so some of that is driving. A friend did ask me a few years ago when I was whining about part time doctors ( insensitive of me as she was one) whether I would be working full time if I were not the wage earner in my family. Don't know. I would certainly like to think so. I have my mobile number on my answering machine at work and have my phone next to me 99% of the time but fortunately am rarely called at night and am grateful for the after hours service - although my other whine is that I used to be able to pay a service to look after my patients and the GP access service put the service I was using out of business. But that's years ago.

Arn Sprogis of the Hunter Urban Division of General Practice once said that if every doctor in the Hunter just worked one extra session a week ie a half day it would be the equivalent of an extra (insert significant number) of full time GPs.

I read a few years ago that Sydney Uni was going to introduce a combined Medicine and Music degree. Don't know whether they did but I thought at the time how convenient that would be for hobby doctors - they could work a couple of half days a week and thus subsidise their poorly attended and poorly paid gigs and feel so pure and superior because of their artistic bent.

Couldn't agree more about the female bit - we don't deserve to take up as many places. I know a couple of part time blokes though who could be doing more. If you ever hear a doctor complaining you should knock them on the head.

I recently had cause to attend an emergency doctors surgery on a Sunday afternoon and was pleasantly surprised to find a female doctor who said she'd spent around 9 hours of her Sunday working.... She was in her 40's and very attractive, but has apparently never married nor had kids. I was going to suggest that maybe only ugly women be allowed to train as doctors, as this would reduce the chance of them marrying and having kids (and therefore reducing their working hours), HOWEVER, this attractive female mid-aged doctor made me question my logic..... I am currently working on an alternate theory and will get back to you with my results....

Whilst attending my local Doctor a short time ago, this very subject came up. He said he had hoped to retire from his practice some years before and he found more and more male doctors are working longer to cover the short fall in Doctors. He said Specialists are becoming very scarce, as few wanted to Specialise these days and the older ones were no longer practicing. If in doubt, try to get a short term appointment with any specialist. As far as female Doctors, without demeaning them, he said they start off, do their Residencies and then within a few years were married and having their own children and then only wanted to return on a part-time basis normally 10am to 2 pm to suit their family needs and requirements, leaving the Practice short staffed for the remainder of the day. A medical crisis is looming, if it hasn't already arrived, after the older male Doctors are no longer practicing.

I am very content with my old male gp, but my wife goes to a group practice and prefers to see a woman doctor. This large practice is substantially of female doctors, but my impression is that less than fifty percent are at work at any one time. It is curious that the rationale for getting men out of general practice were that women were more empathetic, when what has happened is that my wife sees a different one every time she goes, gets no continuity of care, and basically gets treated like pass the parcel with no one wanting to deal with the hard issues. This is one of the problems with part-time gps - ultimately they lack responsibility for their patients. I might add that my impression is that most female specialists are as committed as their male counterparts.

re Femdoc - being as busy as you describe, how do you afford the time to respond in detail to Jeff's poser as you have done. Also to Humpty Dumpty - the Doctor whose particulars you have outlined would be a statistical aberration and far from the norm. As a result, I wont hold my breath waiting for you to get back with your results.

Positive discrimination is only used as a last resort to allow certain groups a better chance at obtaining a position. It also lowers the standard, and should be monitored. A Classic example other than the one you have highlighted is Police recruitment in NSW. I often wonder why the same priciples are not adopted by Underground coal mining companies, brickies labourers, high rise crane operators, metal roofers. All these occupations are male dominated. They are also dirty, hot dangerous work. Funny that!

I consistently find the doctors with the heaviest work load, in greatest demand and under the highest expectations, still have the most time available to share with their patients.

Buell, I used to work in a large retail store that had a huge warehouse (I worked in the warehouse team unloading trucks and moving pallets of things around - hot, hard work in a tin warehouse and lots of heavy lifting. A few months after I joined the team, they decided to apply equal numbers of males and females across all departments. So our team of 12 or so became 6 men, 6 women. The problem was that the ladies could legally only lift 18kg as a result of OH&S reg's at the time. 99% of the work was much heavier so we ended up with 6 guys doing 99% of the work (work that 12 guys had shared only a week or two earlier)..... at least we were ensuring equal rights I suppose!!