Gender and the professional career of primary care physicians in Andalusia (Spain).

Background: Although the proportion of women in medicine is growing, female physicians continue to be disadvantaged in professional activities. The purpose of the study was to determine and compare the professional activities of female and male primary care physicians in Andalusia and to assess the effect of the health center on the performance of these activities. Methods: Descriptive, cross-sectional, and multicenter study. Setting: Spain. Participants: Population: urban health centers and their physicians. Sample: 88 health centers and 500 physicians. Independent variable: gender. Measurements: Control variables: age, postgraduate family medicine specialty (FMS), patient quota, patients/day, hours/day housework from Monday to Friday, idem weekend, people at home with special care, and family situation. Dependent variables: 24 professional activities in management, teaching, research, and the scientific community. Self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive, bivariate, and multilevel logistic regression analyses. Results: Response: 73.6%. Female physicians: 50.8%. Age: female physicians, 49.1 ± 4.3 yrs; male physicians, 51.3 ± 4.9 yrs (p < 0.001). Female physicians with FMS: 44.2%, male physicians with FMS: 33.3% (p < 0.001). Female physicians dedicated more hours to housework and more frequently lived alone versus male physicians. There were no differences in healthcare variables. Thirteen of the studied activities were less frequently performed by female physicians, indicating their lesser visibility in the production and diffusion of scientific knowledge. Performance of the majority of professional activities was independent of the health center in which the physician worked. Conclusions: There are gender inequities in the development of professional activities in urban health centers in Andalusia, even after controlling for family responsibilities, work load, and the effect of the health center, which was important in only a few of the activities under study.

Diez aportaciones del empleo de la metodología cualitativa en una auditoría de comunicación interna en Atención Primaria.

Qualitative methodology, originally belonging to the Social Sciences domain, has progressively incorporated to Health Research to the scepticism of many and the admiration of others. Nowadays, validity and fiability of these qualitative techniques is still questioned by a great amount of health researchers and their use provokes doubt among reviewers and other members of the scientific community. This article presents as a fundamental measure for the validity of the qualitative methodology its precise use to approach determinate research objectives specific to them and, echoing the extra issue of the Health Services Research on December 1999 on this methodology, gathers the contribution of the use of these techniques from a complementary point of view, in a Internal Communication Audit conducted in the Primary Care Services of four Regional Health Systems: Area II of the INSALUD (National Health Institute), Basque Health System, Canary Health System and Andalusian Health System.