Kimberly Ruscher-Rogers was introduced to medicine through her mother, who is a nurse midwife, but instead of following in her mother’s footsteps, Ruscher-Rogers has decided to become a physician.

’My mother’s generation, they did not go to college or they only went to nursing school,’ Ruscher-Rogers said. ’My mother had no role models. I’ve been surrounded with them.’

Ruscher-Rogers is a third-year student at Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee and one of a growing number of women interested in becoming a physician. For the first time ever, the number of women applying to medical school surpassed the number of men in 2003-04, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges. Some 50.8% of applicants were women, while 49.2% were men.

When it came time to walk through the medical school doors, however, more men then women entered. Men made up 50.3% of the class entering in 2003-04, with women at 49.7%.

Almost 35,000 individuals applied to attend medical school in the 2003-04 school year, a 3.4% increase over last year’s applicant pool of 33,625.

The number of applicants to medical schools in the United States has fallen in the past six years, but the increase in interest from women helped halt that slide. The number of women applicants -- 17,672 -- rose almost 7% over the 2002-03 total.

Willarda Edwards, MD, chair of the AMA’s Women Physicians Congress and chair of the National Medical Assn. board of trustees, said one reason the number of women in medicine has been steadily rising is that more women are studying sciences as they progress through school. In addition, there are fewer physician stereotypes.

’Certainly women see they can be physicians now, and not just in primary care, but surgery and specialties that were once closed by the old boy network,’ Dr. Edwards said.

She has seen even her own perceptions tested.

’Four years ago I was surprised to talk to a female colleague and find out she was a urologist, which is definitely a male-dominated field,’ she said. ’It amazed me, and that’s the beauty of where health care is going.’

Ruscher-Rogers said she never considered studying to be a nurse rather than a physician. She felt she had the ability to make it through medical school, and she had seen other women do it. There were classmates with similar plans and women physicians portrayed on TV. Ruscher-Rogers never considered her gender a barrier.

If her mother had had the same opportunities, she might have chosen a similar path.

’I’m confident my mother would have been a doctor now, and she would have made a great one,’ Ruscher-Rogers said.

Dr. Edwards said the end result of more women in the physician work force is better patient care.

’Women have demanded time to take care [of] their families, and men have followed, insisting on family time and more balanced schedules as well,’ she said.

Physicians who are better rested and happier make better doctors, she said, which translates into better care for patients.