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Background: All European countries need to increase the number of health professionals in the near future. Most efforts have not brought the expected results so far. The current notion is that this is mainly related to the fact that female physicians will clearly outnumber their male colleagues within a few years in nearly all European countries. Still, women are underrepresented in leadership and research positions throughout Europe.
Objectives: The MedGoFem project addresses multiple perspectives with the participation of multiple stakeholders. The goal is to facilitate the implementation of Gender Equality Plans (GEP) in university hospitals; thereby, transforming the working conditions for women working as researchers and highly qualified physicians simultaneously. Our proposed innovation, a crosscutting topic in all research and clinical activities, must become an essential part of university hospital strategic concepts.
Methods: We capture the current status with gender-sensitive demographic data concerning medical staff and conduct Web-based surveys to identify cultural, country-specific, and interdisciplinary factors conducive to women’s academic success. Individual expectations of employees regarding job satisfaction and working conditions will be visualized based on “personal construct theory” through repertory grids. An expert board working out scenarios and a gender topic agenda will identify culture-, nation-, and discipline-specific aspects of gender equality. University hospitals in 7 countries will establish consensus groups, which work on related topics. Hospital management supports the consensus groups, valuates group results, and shares discussion results and suggested measures across groups. Central findings of the consensus groups will be prepared as exemplary case studies for academic teaching on research and work organization, leadership, and management.
Results: A discussion group on gender equality in academic medicine will be established on an internationally renowned open-research platform. Project results will be published in peer-reviewed journals with high-impact factors. In addition, workshops on gender dimension in research using the principles of Gendered Innovation will be held. Support and consulting services for hospitals will be introduced in order to develop a European consulting service.
Conclusions: The main impact of the project will be the implementation of innovative GEP tailored to the needs of university hospitals, which will lead to measurable institutional change in gender equality. This will impact the research at university hospitals in general, and will improve career prospects of female researchers in particular. Simultaneously, the gender dimension in medical research as an innovation factor and mandatory topic will be strengthened and integrated in each individual university hospital research activity. Research funding organizations can use the built knowledge to include mandatory topics for funding applications to enforce the use and implementation of GEP in university hospitals.
Purpose: Due to the demographic change morbidity raises the demand for medical hospital services as well as a need for medical specialization, while economic and human resources are diminishing. Unlike other industries hospitals do not have sufficient data and adequate models to relate growing demands and increasing performance to growth in staff capacity and to increase in staff competences.
Method: Based on huge medical data sample covering the years from 2010 to 2014 with more than 150,000 operations of the Department for Anesthesiology at the University Hospital Muenster, Germany, comparisons are drawn between the development of medical services and the development of personnel capacity and expertise.
Results: The numbers of surgical operations increased by 21% and "skin incision to closure" time by 17%. Simultaneously, personnel capacity grew by 16% largely resting upon recruiting first-time employees. Expertise measured as "years of professional experience" dwindled from 10 years to 5.4 years on average and staff turnover accelerated.
Conclusion: Static benchmark data collected at fixed reference dates do not sufficiently reflect the nexus between capacity and competence and do not reflect the dynamic changes in a hospital’s requirements for expertise and specialization, at all. Staff turnover leads to a loss of experience, which jeopardizes patient safety and hampers medical specialization. In consequence of the dramatic shortage of medical specialists, drop-off rates must be reduced and retention rates must be increased. To that end, working conditions need to be fundamentally converted for a multigeneration, multicultural, and increasingly female workforce.
