Impact of gender on how intensive care medicine residents experience their medical studies and training and perceive their specialty: a national survey.

Abstract

Background: Parity has been reached among French residents in the intensive care medicine (ICM) specialty; however, concerns about underrepresentation of women in leadership position and gender discriminations remain. We hypothesised that perception of gender inequity differs between female and male ICM residents and increases along the ICM training.

Methods: This nationwide observational closed-survey investigated how ICM residents experienced their medical curriculum, how they perceived the ICM specialty, and the potential reasons for women to be underrepresented in leadership position.

Results: Among 113 residents who responded to the survey, 63 (55.6%) were females, and 85 (75.2%) were beginners. Twenty-nine (25.7%) answered to be always or often self-confident, and this number was lower in female than in male residents (14.3% versus 40.8%, p = 0.003). Women had less often than men the feeling to keep up with the situation along their medical training (39.7% versus 70.8%, p = 0.004). Societal injunctions to prioritise family over professional responsibilities were more often considered as barriers to leadership position by women than by men (75.8% versus 51.1%, p = 0.015). Fully trained residents agreed more frequently than beginners with the 2 following reasons associated with gender gap in ICM leadership position: men being more ambitious (31.1% versus 9.4%, p = 0.024) and professional environment discriminating against women (64% versus 46.2%, p = 0.017). Experience of non-physical sexual harassment was very common in female residents, with 74.6% of them reporting to have been directly subjected to jokes of a sexual nature (versus 28.6% of men, p = 0.001) and 49.2% of them to have been victims of allegations with humiliating connotation (versus 22.4% of men, p = 0.007).

Conclusions: Female ICM residents reported more often the feeling of not coping with their medical training, the lack of self-confidence, and non-physical sexual harassment than men. Reported awareness of a less supportive institutional environment to women academic career and of difference in assertiveness between men and women increased along advancement in ICM training suggesting room for interventions.