Pregnancy and parenthood are especially difficult for female surgical residents, US study shows

Women training in general surgery in the US faced higher rates of mistreatment, obstetric complications, and postpartum depression than female partners of male general surgery residents, a study in JAMA Surgery has found.1About half of US medical graduates are women and 48% of those entering procedural specialties in 2022 were women. Because medical training coincides with women’s childbearing years, their decisions to pursue specialty training are often influenced by how conducive a field is to pregnancy and childbearing. Women in procedural specialties face reproductive hazards such as prolonged standing, exposure to radiation and toxic agents, and sharps injuries. Surgical training programmes also tend to have little workforce redundancy, making work related accommodations for pregnancy challenging.Erika Rangel, associate director of the surgical residency programme at Massachusetts General Hospital and an author of the study, told The BMJ that as chair of a working group with the American College of Surgeons she…
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