We are pleased to invite you to: Health and Wellbeing Maurice Bloch Annual Lecture Series

Title: "The "lady doctor" problem: medical misogyny and its impacts in Australia. 

Date: Wednesday 9 October 2024

Time: 1-2pm, tea and coffee will be served beforehand at 12.30pm 

Presenter: Dr Louise Stone

Chair: Prof Rosalind Searle

Venue: 103B Clarice Pears building

Zoom link https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/85404496046?pwd=TEFtcGwvSjg1NmVqOFYyUkcyQk9idz09 

Meeting ID: 854 0449 6046 Passcode: 718380

Abstract: Mental illness is unevenly distributed in Australia, with a particular areas of need in rural communities. Unfortunately, there is a critical shortage of rural doctors, particularly in psychiatry. There is also a worsening shortage of rural GPs, particularly female GPs. Mental health work in General Practice rests disproportionately on female doctors, and the financial and psychosocial burden of this work is increasing. Patients with deep and complex trauma, patients with disabilities and patients with personality vulnerabilities have difficulty accessing other mental health services in rural Australia, and so rely on their GPs for care.

Young female GPs feel underprepared for the complexity of mental health care they are required to provide. Unfortunately, this means burnout and frank mental illness in this cohort is high. Despite this, rural Australia boasts some extraordinary clinicians, consumers and other health professionals, and I'll be introducing you to a few (including Kate, who works as a GP surgeon in Antarctica and Olga, who flies her little pink plane around Western Australia). 

I'll present the evidence for the disproportionate clinical load on female GPs, including the professional and personal consequences for female GPs in their first five years post fellowship. Many women doctors are becoming unwell in the wake of increased workload and moral distress. There is an unacceptably high rate of sexual harassment, bullying and racism that falls disproportionately on doctors who live with disprivilege. In this presentation, I'll outline the work detailed in our international book on sexual harassment of doctors, by doctors, highlighting some of the international solutions to this wicked problem. 

If we are to sustain the critical workforce of women GPs, we need to consider strategies to support them educationally, personally and professionally.

If you cannot attend in person but would like to join online please do so with this zoom link https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/85404496046?pwd=TEFtcGwvSjg1NmVqOFYyUkcyQk9idz09 

Meeting ID: 854 0449 6046 Passcode: 718380

BIO: Professor Louise Stone is an Australian GP with clinical, research, teaching and policy expertise in mental health. She has led GP training in Australia in the past, and has worked in rural, remote and urban settings, including with the famous Royal Flying Doctor Service. In her policy work, she has worked with Federal, State and local governments, and non-government agencies on mental health, doctors' health and primary care. She is known for her writing, and during the pandemic, she wrote extensively to support young GPs who were struggling with the clinical and emotional load of caring for patients and family during the pandemic. 

Louise has research interests in medically unexplained symptoms, young people's mental health and doctors' health. She is beginning a research program entitled "I love my work, but it's time to go" exploring the experiences of female GPs who have left the profession due to overwhelm, moral distress and financial stress in the wake of the pandemic. She is leading a text on mental health generalism, with a team of GP experts. Her edited volume "Sexual harassment of doctors, by doctors: healing the culture of medicine across the world" is to be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2025. She is working with Professor Rosalind Searle as a co-editor and 76 authors from 25 countries. 

Louise lives and works as a GP in Canberra, Australia. She is Professor at the University of Adelaide Medical School and Associate Professor at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. Her website is dr.louise.stone@wordpress.com