Medical women in academia: silenced by the system

Early in my career I was blessed with 4 children. Needless to say, this forced me to make major decisions about how I would conduct my medical practice. Although my doctor-husband became involved in hospital and committee work, teaching and a full range of family medicine activities, I decided that I wanted to spend more time with my children while they were young; therefore, I had an exclusively office-based practice.

Now all 4 children are off to university. I have no regrets about how my career evolved. I continued to practise medicine while many of my female colleagues fell by the wayside because they could not balance career and family. My only regrets echo those expressed in the article by Anita Palepu and Carol Herbert¹ — I “regret the time [I] did not have for [my family] rather than the time that [I] did not have for work.”

There are some things that I would have done differently, but in the end I think things turned out well for all of us. Proof of this was a recent family discussion during which we talked about which was our favourite weekday. My eldest, without hesitation, declared Thursday to be his favourite weekday because, as a little guy growing up, he knew that I was always home on Thursdays and we would spend time together and do things. The tears in my eyes confirmed that I made the right decisions.

Shirley Epstein Family Physician Toronto, Ont.