Doctors have started the #LikeALadyDoc hashtag in response to a newspaper column claiming that a rising number of female doctors is causing problems in the NHS. The article, by Sunday Times columnist Dominic Lawson, refers to the “the feminisation of medicine” and its impact on the NHS. He quotes Brian McKinstry, a former senior research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, who in 2008 warned that “fewer women than men choose to work out of hours, and the increase in women doctors may have partly influenced the recent abandonment of out-of-hours work by general practitioners in the UK”. Junior doctor Roshana Mehdian told BuzzFeed News the article was “spreading misleading propaganda” about the proposed junior doctor contract. “The issue with our contract is as simple as this: It is unsafe and lacks proper safeguards to prevent hospitals overworking doctors, which is dangerous for patients,” Mehdian said. Lawson’s article conflated the junior doctors strike over an unsafe and unfair contract with an increase in female doctors in the workforce, which has no direct correlation, she added. Mocking the article, Mehdian shared a selfie and her talent of being able to “scrub up both the dishes and for an operation”. Mehdian said the goal of the hashtag is to “ridicule Dominic Lawson’s backward views and the conflation of female doctors and the junior contract”. Both male and female doctors are using the hashtag to show their dismay towards Lawson’s “outdated and sexist” views. “Women doctors are surgeons, physicians, leaders, college presidents, innovators and often mothers, sisters, daughters,” Mehdian said. “To me, and to most people in this century, that is a cause for celebration and nothing else.” Mehdian, who works as a trauma and orthopaedic surgery registrar, described the reaction towards the hashtag as very positive” and “supportive”. “We’ve had celebrities like Martin Sheen and Jon Snow support us. The public have been incredibly supportive also.” Source
