Childbearing and Child Care in Surgery

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Abstract
AT THIS TIME, about one half of the graduating medical students in the US are women. As one reviews the list of graduates at a commencement ceremony, one notes that relatively few new physicians are destined for a surgical career. Surgical chairs, residency program directors, and the profession as a whole want to attract the best and brightest graduates to careers in surgery. Unfortunately, more medical students are choosing "controllable lifestyle" specialties instead.1,2 In addition, a large number of physicians of both sexes who had chosen training in internal medicine, pediatrics, family practice, or surgery are switching to the more controllable lifestyle specialties.2 In 1999, 9 US university-based general surgery residency programs were unable to fill their categorical positions, and more than 70 university-affiliated programs failed to fill their general surgery preliminary slots.3 Despite these observations, a survey of the graduates of our general surgery training program from the last 12 years reaffirmed that the major reasons they chose a surgical career were the overt intellectual and technical challenge and the reward of directly intervening in disease, aspirations shared equally by both sexes. This women and men either do not consider lifestyle issues or consider them equally when selecting a career specialty.4-6 Nevertheless, lifestyle issues still surfaced as a concern. Included in these lifestyle issues were the difficulty in balancing childbearing and child care with an intense professional career, both of which, irrespective of attitude, more directly affect women.