Female medical students express more interest in nonsurgical specialties

Surveyed female medical students indicated they were more interested in nonsurgical specialties than their male counterparts, according to research presented at the Women in Medicine Summit.

“While efforts to improve gender equality among U.S. medical graduates have been underway, women remain underrepresented, with only 20.7% of general surgeons identifying as female as of 2017,” Heba Elassar, BS, a fourth year medical student at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, said during the presentation.

Elassar and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional survey of male and female medical students in all grade levels at a Midwestern medical school. Participants were surveyed on demographic information, lifestyle preferences, perceptions of their surgical clerkship and career factors.

Among the students asked, 27% (n = 133) participated in the survey.

Elassar and colleagues found that female students were more likely to be interested in nonsurgical specialties and less likely to be interested in highly specialized fields compared with their male colleagues.

They also determined that female participants placed greater importance on providing preventive care than males in addition to placing less of an importance on salary.

They did not identify a significant difference between male and female students on their ratings of their surgical clerkship experience. However, compared with male participants, females reported that their surgical clerkship was less rewarding.

Due to female respondents indicating they were less interested in both salary potential and highly specialized medical fields, Elassar said this may suggest that length of training time may influence women’s decisions on their medical specialty. However, she said the study did not directly assess this association.

“These results suggest a perpetuation of the attitudes towards being a woman in surgery that are potentially sustained by priority differences in lifestyle or duration of training,” Elassar said. “The early exposure to surgical fields through surgeons that have similar values can serve as an opportunity to educate female students on how a career in surgery can ultimately align with their priorities.”