Gender Differences in Medical Student Perceptions of a Career in Cardiology

Worldwide, the cardiology profession has an under-representation of women. We assessed medical students' perceptions of cardiology as a career choice with the aim of identifying barriers to gender diversity.

An anonymous survey was distributed to medical students studying at three Australian medical universities. Questions pertained to demographics, year and stage of medical training, desire to pursue cardiology, and perceived barriers to a cardiology career. Results were analysed according to identified gender and desire to pursue or not pursue a cardiology career. Multivariable logistic regression evaluated for independent associations. The primary outcome were barriers identified to pursuing a career in cardiology.

From 127 medical student respondents (86.6% female, mean age 25.9±4.8 years), 37.0% stated they wanted to pursue a career in cardiology (39.1% of women versus 23.5% of men, p=0.54). The top four perceived barriers to a cardiology career included: poor work-life balance (92/127, 72.4%), physician training process (63/127, 49.6%), on-call requirements (50/127, 39.4%) and lack of flexibility (49/127, 38.6%), with no gender differences. Women were more likely to report gender-related barriers (37.3% versus 5.9%, p=0.01) and less likely to identify procedural aspects as a barrier (5.5% women versus 29.4% men, p=0.001). Students in their pre-clinical years were more likely to want a career in cardiology (odds ratio 3.0, 95% confidence interval 1.2-7.7, p=0.02).

A high proportion of female and male medical students want to pursue a career in cardiology with both genders identifying major barriers of poor work-life balance, lack of flexibility, on-call requirements and the training process.