Parental Stress in Academic Emergency Medicine Physicians.

Abstract

Background: Recent publications have shown that women are more likely to leave emergency medicine at a younger age than men. We aim to describe the prevalence of parental stress in academic emergency medicine and its association with scheduling practices and desire to leave medicine.

Methods: Blinded survey sent to eight geographically diverse academic sites. Survey included five domains: academic rank and perception of progress, child and childcare characteristics, clinical scheduling practices, plans to leave medicine, and validated psychometric measures including the Parental Stress Scale (PSS: normal population score 35-45). Likert scale responses were dichotomized as either moderate/extremely likely versus less than moderately likely/unsure. Descriptive statistics were calculated, and linear and multivariate regression analyses were performed using STATA 16.

Results: A total of 280 surveys were accessed, and 225 (80%) surveys had PSS completed. Of this cohort, there were 90 females, 123 men, 1 intersex, and 15 surveys had no sex reported. The median number of children was 2 (IQR 1-3), and the median age of the youngest child was 4 (IQR 1-9). The parental stress scale median score was 40 (IQR 35-46). There was no significant difference in the parental stress scale by sex. The number of children (B-coeff -1.88, p = 0.007), age of the youngest child (B-coeff -4.2, p = 0.000), use of daycare (B-coeff 3.8, p = 0.027), ability to preference times of shifts (day, swing, night shift) (B-coeff -2.4, p = 0.046), being a nocturnist (B-coeff 2.75, p = 0.006), and being able to completely set their own schedule in terms of days and times worked (B-coeff -2.19, p = 0.03) were associated with the PSS score. The parental stress scale was not associated with the likelihood to leave emergency medicine or leave the current job in 5 years.

Conclusion: Academic emergency physicians had parental stress scale scores similar to the general population. Parental stress scale score was not associated with a plan to leave emergency medicine.