Does Leave of Absence Affect Publication Productivity for Physician Trainees During Anesthesiology Residency?

Abstract

Background: Residency occurs for most physicians during the childbearing years. As residents face demanding work schedules, the training experiences may be further stressed by parenthood. There is a perception that residents who take parental leave are less academically productive.

Methods: We obtained the names of anesthesia residents from Mayo Clinic graduating classes of 2016 to 2021. Google Scholar, EMBASE, and PubMed were used to search for publications by the names of residents. Gender and leave of absence data for each resident during residency were identified. A set of logistic regressions was used to examine leave from work related to the residents' publication outcomes.

Results: Of the 149 residents included in the study, 49 (32.9%) took parental and 19 (12.75%) took other types of extended leave (≥ 5 days). Those who took parental leave did not differ in likelihood of being published compared with those who took other types of extended leave (P = .066) or no leave (P = .447). No relationship was found between taking parental leave with total number of publications, first author publications, second author publications, or original research publication after controlling for gender, graduation year, or total number of days of leave.

Conclusions: Taking parental leave did not adversely affect scholarly output among anesthesiology residents at a single multi-site institution.