Maternity policy and practice during surgery residency: How we do it

Pregnancy and Motherhood During Surgical Training

“…A recent survey of US surgical program directors found that more than 60% believe that motherhood adversely affects a trainee's work, and nearly half suggested that the best time for a woman to have a child is during research years. 8 Although single-institution experiences have been described, [9][10][11] leave duration, call responsibilities, attitudes of coworkers and faculty, and the presence of postpartum support are mixed, reflecting the diversity in policies, culture, and resources available to childbearing women in surgical training programs. The most contemporary national study of pregnancy during training took place nearly a decade ago and described a higher rate of childbirth in recent graduation cohorts, but challenges beyond negative stigmatization were not examined.…”

The Birth of a Return to work Policy for New Resident Parents in Emergency Medicine

“…Focus, energy, and good health are required to become a competent emergency physician while managing the demands of a new child, irrespective of gender. Worth noting, our pilot of this policy initially treated male and female new resident parents differently by distinguishing between birthing parents and nonbirthing parents because of the physical and emotional burden of childbirth . However, given the aim of being inclusive in our policy development, combined with lessons learned from piloting this policy, we realized that becoming a new parent is emotionally and physically stressful for both mothers and fathers; thus, each new resident parent deserves equal protected time, which our final policy has since been modified to reflect.…”

Pregnancy among residents enrolled in general surgery (PREGS): a survey of residents in a single Canadian training program

“…This has been previously reported in the literature, 6,8,13 and opinions regarding the increased workload of fellow residents are varied. For example, whereas Sayres and colleagues 13 found that more than 40% of pregnant residents felt hostility from their fellow colleagues, Carty and colleagues 10 reported that residents perceived no negative impact on their own workloads during a colleague's pregnancy. It is imperative that contingency plans be present in advance so that they can be put into place quickly if needed.…”

“…A maternity/ parenting policy for surgical residents must account for these unique concerns and should address the following issues, which were deemed to be important by the residents we surveyed: clinical expectations in the third trimester, including on-call duties; flexible rotation scheduling; the use of vacation time for maternity/ parenting and the amount of time that can be taken without affecting length of training. Carty and colleagues 10 surveyed residents in a single general surgery training institution in the United States where a maternity policy had been formed immediately after the first resident pregnancy. In that report, all resident mothers felt they had been treated very fairly, and colleagues of these residents felt that the pregnancies did not negatively affect their own workloads.…”