A commentary by a pediatrician in Oak Bay.

The B.C. government has reported success and pride in recruiting and even fast-tracking American physicians to B.C.

The College of Physicians, with the government, is working quickly to license specialists such as American pediatricians and obstetricians, even though their training is shorter than in Canada.

Meanwhile, here’s what we know: Female physicians have an infertility risk twice that of the general population, and they have a suicide risk, in some studies, 25 to 75 per cent higher than the general population.

Where professional women usually live longer than comparable professional men by about five years, women physicians simply lose this five-year longevity advantage over men.

Women make up 60 per cent of medical schools now and are already 45 per cent of the working doctors in B.C.

What if the government worked as hard to preserve and optimize the professional humans they have, as they did to poach physicians from other countries?

Women physicians experience burnout and micro-aggressions at a........

© Times Colonist