Do Mytrang H, Lipner Shari R
Weill Cornell Medical College, Tri-Institutional MD-PhD program, New York, NY, United States.
Weill Cornell Medical College, Department of Dermatology, New York, NY, United States.
Int J Womens Dermatol. 2020 Sep 29;6(5):414-418. doi: 10.1016/j.ijwd.2020.09.009. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Gender disparity in research funding, leadership, authorship, and compensation in medicine is well documented, with most parameters favoring men over women. Gender differences in salary in dermatology have not been well studied.
This study aimed to investigate the contribution of gender to dermatologists' compensation in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system.
A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted by identifying VA-affiliated dermatologists from the U.S. Department of VA website. The contributions of gender, years since graduation, h-index, academic appointment, race, and region on the publicly available salaries were analyzed using a linear-regression model to isolate the effects of gender and interaction with other variables.
This study included 247 VA dermatologists with publicly available salaries (114 women and 133 men). On univariate analyses, male dermatologists had significantly higher compensation than female dermatologists ( = .0333). However, male dermatologists also had significantly more years since graduation ( < .0001) and higher h-indices ( < .0001). Multivariate analysis showed that gender was not a significant contributor to salary. Instead, years since graduation ( < .0001), h-index ( = .0066), and academic appointment ( < .0001) contributed significantly to VA dermatologists' salaries. Region and race were not determinants of salary. Gender did not contribute to salary overall, but there was an interactive effect between gender and region ( = .0099). Compared with women, male dermatologists had significantly higher salaries in the Midwest ( < .0018).
Our study revealed that VA hospitals have maintained gender equality in dermatologist compensation nationally, which could serve as a model to close salary gender gaps in other health care systems. Further research should focus on inclusion of VA physicians from different specialties, as well as across multiple years, to further characterize this observation.
医学领域在研究资金、领导地位、作者身份和薪酬方面的性别差异有充分记录，大多数指标对男性有利而非女性。皮肤科领域的薪资性别差异尚未得到充分研究。
本研究旨在调查性别对退伍军人事务部（VA）医疗系统中皮肤科医生薪酬的影响。
通过从美国退伍军人事务部网站识别与VA相关的皮肤科医生进行回顾性横断面研究。使用线性回归模型分析性别、毕业年限、h指数、学术职位、种族和地区对公开可得薪资的影响，以分离性别影响及与其他变量的相互作用。
本研究纳入了247名有公开薪资的VA皮肤科医生（114名女性和133名男性）。单因素分析显示，男性皮肤科医生的薪酬显著高于女性皮肤科医生（P = 0.0333）。然而，男性皮肤科医生毕业年限也显著更长（P < 0.0001）且h指数更高（P < 0.0001）。多因素分析表明，性别对薪资并非显著影响因素。相反，毕业年限（P < 0.0001）、h指数（P = 0.0066）和学术职位（P < 0.0001）对VA皮肤科医生的薪资有显著影响。地区和种族不是薪资的决定因素。性别总体上对薪资无影响，但性别与地区之间存在交互作用（P = 0.0099）。与女性相比，男性皮肤科医生在中西部地区的薪资显著更高（P < 0.0018）。
我们的研究表明，VA医院在全国范围内皮肤科医生薪酬方面保持了性别平等，这可为缩小其他医疗系统中的薪资性别差距提供范例。进一步的研究应聚焦于纳入不同专业以及多年的VA医生，以进一步描述这一观察结果。
