MUSCAT, Oct 7 - The Sultanate has been seeing an increase in the number of women doctors. “According to the statistics from 2009 to 2015, the number of female medical students has been higher than that of males at the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU),” a study has found.
A study led by Dr Nazar Mohamed Elfaki, Adviser, Health Systems and Human Resource Planning at the Ministry of Health, has indicated that 64 per cent of the medical students in 2015 were females compared with 54 per cent in 2009.
A similar trend has been observed in the residency training programme for doctors. The training programmes for resident doctors are organised by the OMBS. The average intake of OMSB is 150 residents per year in different specialty programmes.
“It has been noticed that female doctors comprised 62.5 per cent on average out of the total pool of applicants with differences in preferences among specialties,” reveals the study.
For instance, the higher number of applicants for internal medicine, family medicine, paediatrics and dermatology were women, while applicants for orthopaedics and oral and maxillofacial surgery was higher among men.
At the same time, the Annual Health Report of the ministry reveals the number of women doctors rose from 2,053 in 2012 to 2,403 in 2016. The number of male doctors rose from 2,904 in 2012 to 3,472 in 2016.
As for active workforce, the Ministry of Health report reveals that female doctors represented 42 per cent of the total doctors in 2015, compared with 27 per cent in 1990.
It increased four per cent from 1990 to 2000, doubled to 8 per cent from 2000 to 2010. The proportion of specialised female doctors reached 31 per cent in 2015, compared with 21 per cent in 1990.
As for doctors, they reached 21.4 per 10,000 people in 2015, compared with 5.1 in 1980, while for nurses, it reached 46.3 per 10,000, compared with 10.8 in 1980.
The percentage of women applicants for medical education increased from 59.3 in 2010-2011 to 63.2 in 2015-2016 and it reached 75 in 2016-2017, while the number of male applicants is steadily declining.
As for the specialists and consultants’ workforce in the MoH, the proportion of female doctors has reached 31 per cent of total specialists and consultants in 2015, compared with 21 per cent in 1990.
Also, the percentage of female specialists and consultants working in senior management posts has increased steadily from 0 per cent in 1990 to 30 per cent in 2013.
Female specialists and consultants were more in obstetrics and gynaecology, family and community medicine, biochemistry and dermatology.
On the contrary, they were below 10 per cent in specialties like general surgery, orthopaedics, ENT, cardiothoracic surgery, gastroenterology, neurosurgery, nephrology and cardiology. This variation is comparable with the OMBS residents. According to the study, the percentage of female doctors in the health ministry has increased by 4 per cent from 1990 to 2000, while it doubled to 8 per cent from 2000 to 2010.
In general, the number of female medical students in Oman is higher than that of male medical students and the number of applicants and accepted postgraduate doctors for the speciality training programmes was higher among women doctors than male doctors.
Statistics in Oman revealed that the proportion of female doctors among the senior hospital administration was less than 6 per cent.
SAMUEL KUTTY
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