When I graduated from medical school in 1973, there were 10 female physicians in my class of 200.

The admissions rate today in Texas medical schools for females is 51 percent to 53 percent, roughly mirroring the population.

At Baylor University, 60 percent of our premedical students are female.

The sharp increase in female doctors has tremendously enhanced health care.

They often bring superb intellectual skills balanced with an innate compassion and strong clinical intuition.

One female Baylor colleague has been instrumental in the development of my own ideas about faith and health care delivery.

And being the father of two daughters, I am glad equal opportunity has finally made it to my chosen vocation.

Two years ago, I asked a team of students in one of my classes to do their weekly class presentation on gender issues in medicine. They reported some startling and disturbing statistics.

Seven years after residency, 95 percent of men were practicing full time.

But only 35 percent of women were still practicing full time seven years later.

The reasons are, of course, diverse but range from childbearing realities to a realization of the toll medicine can take on family and personal lives.

Many women leave medicine prematurely. Others downsize and practice share.

Another statistic leapt out during the discussion. Tuition only covers approximately 15 percent of the cost of a medical education.

The rest is covered by a combination of state and federal taxes and reimbursements from patient care.

This caused an uproar in my class.

Said one female student, “If I’m smart enough to get into medical school, this is still America and I’m free to do what I want.

“If I want to drop out after five years and have babies, that’s my right”.

“No,” another female student fired back. “You’re taking a spot that society needs. I’m committed to this for a lifetime. I want to do it all, and I will.

“It’s not fair to all of us for you to do that unless you do it full time. Medicine is a social contract — we have responsibilities.”

What became interesting as the discussion progressed is this whole notion of medicine as a social contract.

We live in a time of radical individualism where we rarely think of what is good for those around us.

Our only responsibility, as Ayn Rand would say, is to our own needs and the god within us.

Yet if society is funding the cost of educating a doctor, shouldn’t society expect something in return?

Does our responsibility as physicians extend beyond the boundary of the patient-physician relationship?

We are in a labor crisis in American medicine — people are living longer, the Baby Boomers are getting older and medical schools cannot expand at a rate fast enough to meet our needs.

The other reality that emerged in this class discussion is that none of the students — men or women — has any interest in working the 80- to 90-hour weeks that generations of physicians before them did.

They are content to be contract employees of a system with no night or weekend call.

They want to have it all — fulfilling work, family, outside interests and a healthy spiritual life.

Yet that kind of practice structure only adds to the overall doctor shortage for if they are in fact limiting their practice, it means other disciplines must expand to meet the demand.

Health care remains a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week responsibility.

I’m not sure I have the answers and I can sympathize with both students’ perspectives.

Admission to medical schools should be gender, racially and ethnically blind.

For an admission committee to ask the kinds of questions that arise from these kind of statistics could be considered a form of gender discrimination.

Yet the reality of how society deals with this will affect every American’s health care delivery in the future.

Dr. Michael Attas is a local doctor, a medical humanities professor and an Episcopal priest. Contact him by e-mail correspondence at Michael_Attas@baylor.edu.