Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-602)
MR PAUL
STREETS, PROFESSOR
ELISABETH PAICE,
MR BERNARD
RIBEIRO AND
PROFESSOR DAVID
GORDON
29 JUNE 2006
Q600 Dr Naysmith: Maybe it is misquoting
him a little bit. What he said was that they recognised the importance
of it and were trying much harder than the others. I think that
is what he really meant.
Mr Ribeiro: Can I follow up on
that? We have worked very hard with the Department of Health over
the last 20 odd years to increase the number of consultant surgeons,
and, in fact, we have had in the last 10 years a 60% increase
in consultant surgeons. What we have noticed in that time is that
the number of female consultants starting with them has increased
from a point where we used to have something in the order of about
50 or 60 female consultants to 220, and that is still only 6%
of the surgical workforce and there is a lot of work to be done
to get that right. On the diversity side, I think I heard it quoted,
and I cannot remember, in some of the evidence that was given,
of I think Sheffield Medical School. One of the members of our
council, Mr Andrew Raftery, who is the Dean for Admissions, has
indeed instituted a system whereby they go round all the local
schools, and the local comprehensives and so forth, to make the
point that medical training is a worthwhile thing to do, and what
we as a college now feel is that, in order to recruit our workforce
in the future, for which we will need to rely on the female workforce
to maintain the surgical workforce, we will have to go into the
medical schools, actively go into the medical schools, promoting
surgery as a career for everybody to do. The question of diversity
is quite a tricky one. You are right to say that there are increasing
numbers of Asian women in surgery, in fact 25% of the female intake
at medical school is almost all female Asians in that context,
but there is not the same amongst the Afro-Caribbeans, and the
question is: why? We were recently in the West Indies, in Jamaica,
doing a course there. A lot of their bright and very able young
people go to the States for their training because their role
models are in the West Indies. What we need are West Indian role
models who are getting on into medicine. Without those role models,
in the same way as women if we do not have women consultants as
role models, you will not recruit.
Q601 Dr Naysmith: While I have you
in front of me why do you think it is that surgery has always
had this reputation of not having many women in it? Why has it
been unattractive for women?
Mr Ribeiro: I think because it
was the perception—and I will give you a very good example—of
long hours, hard work and physical activity. That is no surprise
that the percentage of women doing paediatric surgery is about
23% whereas the percentage doing orthopaedic surgery is less than
3%, and there is perception for orthopaedic surgery that you have
to be a big, strong second row rugby player before you can do
the surgery, and these stereotypical things do put people off,
and I think that what we are realising is that women now drive
heavy goods vehicles because technology makes it possible for
them to steer a vehicle and turn it on a sixpence, and in the
future these specialities which have been thought to be male preserves
will, with the aid of technology, be open to all.
Mr Streets: If I may make two
very brief points on that. One is the flipside of the Working
Time Directive, of course, as it will encourage more women into
the medical workforce because it becomes more possible to run
a medical career alongside a work-life balance, and what the evidence
from the BMA is telling us is that doctors, both male and female,
want a better work-life balance and that is one of the reasons
why 60% of general practice registrars are women because they
think in general practice they can achieve a better work-life
balance. In terms of role models I think Professor Ribeiro's point
is absolutely right and one of the things we hope Article 14 will
do is to enable more people who previously have not been able
to get through the assessment systems of colleges and others,
to access the specialist register because of their experience,
and what we are seeing through Article 14 is the doctors who previously
would not have been able to become consultants are now eligible
to apply. Many of those are from South Asia and therefore may
become the role models of the future for some of the diversity
issues we are talking about.
Q602 Sandra Gidley: I was very, very
struck, particularly with you talking about Asia, by the statistic
we were given, which says that 19% of new medical students were
Asian in 2001, while Asian people made up 7% of the UK population.
Are the Asian students homegrown or are they overseas students
who come and are very attractive to universities because they
pay full fees?
Professor Gordon: These are home
grown. We are looking at a very strong demand for medical school
places from school leavers of ethnic Asian origin, but UK home
grown, and they are chosen purely on their aptitude and merit,
and of course they are excellent students. The point is absolutely,
though, why do we not have working class male students who have
the ability, applying in the right numbers, and we do not know.
We are trying.
Chairman: Could I say that on the Sheffield
Medical School I understand that it has one link with one secondary
school in my constituency and not the other four? Could I thank
you all for coming along this morning and giving us evidence on
these points? Thank you very much.
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