Pomegranate Health
Pomegranate Health is a podcast about the culture of medicine. You'll hear clinicians, researchers and advocates discuss all aspects of professionalism and quality improvement in healthcare. This includes clinical ethics, diagnostic bias, better communication and more equitable systems. For a sampler of these diverse themes of professional practice take a listen to Episode 132 and Episode 125.
If RACP is your CPD home, you can log time spent listening to each episode with the "Add activity to MyCPD" button. And if you're a Basic Physician Trainee, the [Case Report] series might help you prepare for your long case clinical exams.
This is also the home of [IMJ On-Air], featuring authors from the Internal Medicine Journal sharing their latest research. Meanwhile, the [Journal Club] episodes give RACP members a place to talk through their research published in other academic journals.
Feel free to send feedback and suggestions by email at podcast@racp.edu.au.
Pomegranate Health
Ep130: "The motherhood penalty"
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Despite filling more than half of places in Australian medical schools, women represent 45 per cent of all medical practitioners and just 36 per cent of specialists. Female representation dwindles further in many areas of clinical leadership, prompting what has been termed a “leaky pipeline”. It has been reported that women would progress at similar rates to men, and achieve similar remuneration, were it not for the time taken out from the profession to raise children. In this podcast we discuss what it would take to mitigate this so-called “motherhood penalty” through policy, workplace culture and better distribution of labour in the home. This discussion is important because it relates not just to the wellbeing and rights of individual medics, but also to the depth and diversity of the workforce.a
Chapters
1:38 Better support of mothers returning to work
9:09 How leave and part-time work affects the medical workforce and the benefits of flexibility
19:56 The “motherhood penalty” on career progression of women to senior positions
33:52 Broader biases in society not just around gender roles but a health work-life balance
Guests
Associate Professor Kara Allen FANZCA (Royal Melbourne Hospital; University of Melbourne)
Dr Jenny Proimos FRACP (Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne; Monash Centre for Health Research and Innovation;
Production
Produced by Mic Cavazzini DPhil. Music licenced from Epidemic Sound includes ‘Melting Places’ by Andres Cantú, ‘Not Blue’ by Kylie Dailey. Music courtesy of Free Music Archive includes ‘Good Days’ by Cody Francis, ‘Planting Flags’ by Blue Dot Sessions, ‘Helice’ by Monplaisir, ‘Feeling Minnesota by Gavin Luke, and ‘Maybe This Time’ by Major Tweaks. Image by George Peters licenced through Getty Images.
Editorial feedback kindly provided by RACP physicians Zac Fuller, Aidan Tan, Joseph Lee, David Skalicky, and Stella Sarlos. Thanks also to RACP staff Arnika Martus and Kathryn Smith and also to Sarah Anderson of La Trobe University for guiding me through some of the AIHW data.
Please visit the Pomegranate Health web page for a transcript and supporting references. Login to MyCPD to record listening and reading as a prefilled learning activity. Subscribe to new episode email alerts or search for ‘Pomegranate Health’ in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox or any podcasting app.