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Abstract
Introduction As doctors working in intensive care, we noticed the heavy male dominance within the senior leadership team. Despite women outnumbering men at medical school, only 20% of UK intensive care consultants are women. We considered some of the barriers to women succeeding in this acute specialty and reflected on our own personal experiences – being discouraged from applying to training, difficulty balancing family life, lack of role models and safety concerns in managing aggressive patients to name just a few.
Working against expectations from the implicit gender biases of others is challenging and adds an extra layer of complexity.
At a time when many doctors were reducing their hours within the NHS, suffering from burn out and leaving the profession entirely, we wanted to set up a network of professionals who would support and encourage one another and so we organised the first East Midlands Women in Intensive Care Conference.
Aims and objectives of the research project or activity We had three main aims in order to promote gender equity and inclusion within intensive care:
To encourage women to train in intensive care
To create a network of professionals who would support one another
To inspire women into positions of leadership
Knowing that the gender pay gap showed a gap of 18.9% for hospital doctors and that more women than men work less than full time, our additional aim was that the conference was free, to prevent cost being a barrier to attendance. We also advertised that we were a baby friendly conference and offered spaces for breast feeding to try to prevent maternity leave from being a barrier to attendance.
Method or approach To encourage women to apply for training, we had talks from inspirational female leaders about their working lives. We also put on practical workshops in airway management, vascular access, point-of-care ultrasound and chest drain insertion. We provided one-to-one sessions for portfolio review and advice.
Other sessions focussed on wellbeing, offering sound healing, Reiki, point massage and one-to-one mentoring. We also offered workshops about building a financially secure future, getting into research and a practical self-defence class.
Finally, to inspire women into positions of leadership, we had talks on differential attainment and allyship, as well as a senior leader’s panel with representation from across the region. Among the speakers was the Chair of the Women in Intensive Care Medicine (WICM) group.
We had support for this event from the local Regional Advisor, the Training Programme Director and NHS England.
Findings We received feedback from 79 people who attended the conference. 66 women and 13 men. They were asked to score the lectures/workshops out of 10. We grouped the scores of 0–3 as poor, 4–6 as average and 7–10 as good. Figure 1 shows how well received these sessions were.
Stacked bar chart showing the feedback from 3 lectures/workshops at the conference
When asked for any general comments at the conference, with an open text box for, 52 people wrote a response. A summary of this can be seen in figure 2.
Word cloud showing feedback from the question ‘Any general comments?’
When asked ‘What will you do differently after attending this event?’:
39% wrote about changing practice in relation to allyship and better supporting other colleagues
16% stated their intention to apply to training in intensive care
5 individuals said they wanted to make changes within their workplace, through quality improvement projects, to improve equity
3 people said they were keen to spread everything they had learned to others
3 people were planning to get involved in research
Key messages This conference gave those that attended it an opportunity to see women leaders in intensive care and hear them talking about their jobs and lives outside of work. They were able to immerse themselves in sessions they were interested in and spend time networking with others. The overwhelmingly positive feedback has been the start we wanted in moving forwards and making positive change towards gender equity and inclusion within intensive care.
Next steps will be setting up an ongoing regional mentorship programme and we plan to repeat this event every 2 years.