Do female general practitioners have a distinctive type of medical practice?

Using data collected in 1983-84 for a representative sample of 736 general practitioners practising in Quebec, we compared the practice characteristics of the 296 female physicians and the 320 male physicians who agreed to participate. The female doctors were more likely than the male doctors to favour salaried practice in local community health centres, to practise in an urban setting and to have an office-based practice. The female physicians had a less diversified type of practice, being less involved in hospital care, emergency care, home care and administrative work. Sex differences were more marked for physicians in fee-for-service practice than for salaried physicians. Given the increasing numbers of women in the medical profession, these findings are of special interest since they indicate distinctive differences in medical practice between women and men.