I just received an alarming news release via email about a study conducted by Northwestern Medicine. This study showed that female surgical residents suffered more mistreatment than men, which lead to higher burnout rates and more suicidal thoughts from them. Surgical trainees were surveyed in all accredited 260 U.S. general surgical residency programs.
So what kind of mistreatment have these female residents suffered from? Senior author Dr. Karl Bilimoria answers this question. “The biggest driver of burnout was whether you experienced discrimination, abuse or harassment. The more you experienced it, the more likely you were to be burned out,” he says. “Mistreatment among female residents is what seems to explain their higher rates of burnout.”
Among the study’s findings were that 65% of women reported gender discrimination and 20% of women reported sexual discrimination. Some more disturbing findings include 5.3% of women surgical residents had suicidal thoughts in the last year compared to 3.9% of men.
“This is a pretty high percentage of people experiencing mistreatment, and this is detrimental to the development of emotionally healthy surgeons who function effectively. We need them to get the best training to become great doctors,” Bilimoria said. “We need to improve in each one of these areas.”
This is truly an unfortunate thing that is happening to women in the medical field. Hopefully, these programs will make the needed adjustments to prevent these occurrences from happening again. For more information on this interesting study, visit https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2019/10/women-surgical-residents-suffer-more-mistreatment-leading-to-burnout-and-suicidal-thoughts/&fj=1.
