Evolution of Female Leadership in MedicineBibliometric Analysis and Evaluation of the Last 50 Years

Abstract

Objective Perform a biometrical analysis of female leadership in medicine, in order to know the actual perspective and guide future research. Materials and Methods: A retrospective descriptive bibliometric analysis of the literature available in MEDLINE was performed in relation to the leadership of female physicians from 1973 to 2019, through MEDLINE database, using GoPubmed and FABUMED. The following strategy was deployed: ("Leadership"[Mesh]) AND "Physicians, Women"[Mesh] (1973:2019[dp]). Original articles, journal articles, essays, scientific reports and reviews were included to analyze all related indexed literature. To obtain the impact factor (FI), the Journal Citation Reports (7) 2017/2018 of the journals found was used to estimate the quality of each one of them. Results A total of 310 references were found in 139 published journals, 71.2% were original articles; the remaining 22% were reviews. There was a 11.9% increase in publications from 1996 to 2019. The journals with the highest rate of publications were: Academic Medicine and J Womens Health (Larchmt) with 7.7% and 7.1%. Countries with the highest number of publications were United States with 66 (56%), and United Kingdom with 10 (8.6%). Latin America has four publications, while Colombia has none. Conclusion Female leadership in the medical field and the publications regarding this subject have increased in the last decades, mainly in developed countries. Latin America has to make significant efforts to produce more publications in journals with high impact factor, in order to close the gender gap in the medical field.