R. Martins1,2, R. Akhund2, S. Saqib1,2,4, F.A. Khan1,2,4, H. Salar1,2,4, M. Salar1,2,4, L. Evans2, B. Corey2,3 1Hackensack Meridian Health, Surgery, Edison, NEW JERSEY, USA 2University Of Alabama at Birmingham, Surgery, Birmingham, ALABAMA, USA 3Birmingham VA Health Care System, Surgery, Birmingham, ALABAMA, USA 4Aga Khan University Medical College, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
Introduction:
While considerable efforts have been directed towards achieving gender parity in surgical education and training, inequities in the academic productivity of surgical trainees have received much less attention and remain to be addressed. Research involvement and scholarly output is fundamental to ascending the academic ranks, and it is critical that efforts are made to identify and address disparities at the grassroots level.
In this study, we explore sex-based differences in the academic productivity of final-year general surgery (GS) residents across the United States.
Methods:
We sourced GS residency program-level data from the American Medical Association® FREIDA ™ database and program websites, final-year residents’ demographic data from program websites, and resident research output during their residency training (number and types of publications, number of publications that received funding) from PubMed. We were able to reliably infer residents’ sex from their profiles on the GS residency program websites and using Genderize API.
We described numeric data using median and interquartile range [IQR] and compared it using the Mann-Whitney U-test. We compared categorical data using the chi-squared test.
Results:
A total of 1056 final-year GS residents across 211 GS residency programs were included, with 48% of residents being women. The majority of residents belonged to programs that were university-based (59.2%), followed by community-based-university-affiliated (24.1%), and community-based (14.9%).
As shown in the Figure, women final-year residents had published significantly fewer articles during their GS residency than their male counterparts (median: 2 [IQR: 0-5] vs. 3 [1-8]; p = 0.001). This significant difference persisted in programs that were university-based (3 [1-6] vs. 4 [1-11]; p = 0.005) and community-based-university-affiliated (1 [0-4] vs. 2 [1-5]; p = 0.043), but not in those that were community-based (1 [0-4] vs. 1 [0-5]; p = 0.390).
Women residents were also significantly less likely to have published interventional studies/clinical trials (8.3% vs. 12.9%; p = 0.015) and studies that received funding (28.6% vs. 36.8%; p = 0.005).
Conclusion:
Despite having achieved parity of representation in GS residency programs, women surgical trainees have significantly lower academic productivity during their residency than their male counterparts. This disparity is particularly prominent in university-based programs. Our results highlight the need for grassroots-level capacity-building interventions, research opportunities, and mentorship targeted towards eliminating systemic barriers towards academic involvement and productivity for women surgical trainees.