{"doi":"10.7759/cureus.62354","title":"Challenges in Medicine, Magnified by the Pandemic: A Dual Battle for Female Physicians","abstract":"INTRODUCTION: We aimed to understand how the pandemic impacted work hours and employment status of female physicians. Methods: An anonymous survey of female physicians was distributed through social media and email lists from 12/2021 to 2/2022. Primary outcomes were changes in physicians' work schedules and employment status. Analyses included descriptive statistics of closed-ended items and qualitative content analysis of open-ended responses. RESULTS: We restricted our analysis to four specialties: obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, anesthesia, and pediatrics (n=626). The majority (92%) of respondents had caretaking responsibilities; 43% changed work schedules to accommodate those responsibilities. Around 17% of physicians changed jobs. The most common reasons for job changes included: negative work environment, lack of work-life balance, burden of work, and lack of efforts to mitigate COVID-19. Conclusion: The pandemic highlighted the need for flexibility, improvements in workplace culture, and financial incentives to increase retention.","journal":"Cureus","year":2024,"id":475852,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9262,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":700274,"name":"Amy Sullivan","orcid":"0000-0003-1020-3197","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1313168,"name":"Ajayi Ayodele","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":906424,"name":"Annliz Macharia","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1312778,"name":"K. Meredith Atkins","orcid":"0000-0002-9833-4652","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1218121,"name":"Huma Farid","orcid":"0000-0001-8041-4251","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":19,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:06:21.071690Z","pmid":"39006641","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}