Role models for women medical students

Abstract

Research about women physicians indicates that career/family conflicts modify professional involvement. At a large midwestern medical school, 192 women medical students were asked their ideas about women physicians as role models. The first- and second-year women differed significantly in their thoughts from the third- and fourth-year women. The former were acutely aware of an identity crisis as a woman. Their anxiety was projected into a need for a fourth-year elective with a woman physician. The third- and fourth-year women had little interest in working with a woman physician. Because of their anxiety regarding a physician's responsibility for patients, the competency of the physician was the major concern of these women; the sex of the teacher was irrelevant to their educational objectives.