• Hui Zheng, Waddah Al-Refaie, Jiling Chou, Francesca Galli, Victoria Lai, and Erin A Felger.
• From the Department of Surgery, MedStar Washington Hospital Center/Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC (Zheng).
• J. Am. Coll. Surg. 2023 Apr 1; 236 (4): 687694687-694.

BackgroundTo overcome persistent gender disparities in academic surgery, it is critical to examine the earliest phase of surgical training. This national study sought to assess whether gender disparities also existed among surgical interns, as a proxy for medical school research experience in both quantity and quality.Study DesignUsing the 2021 to 2022 public information of 1,493 US-graduated categorical general surgery interns, a bibliometric evaluation was conducted to assess medical school research experience. Multivariable linear regressions with response log-transformed were performed to evaluate the impact of intern gender on (1) total number of peer-reviewed publications, (2) total impact factor (TIF), and (3) adjusted TIF based on authorship placement (aTIF). Back-transformed estimates were presented.ResultsOf these interns, 52.3% were female. Significant differences were observed in TIF (male 6.4 vs female 5.3, p = 0.029), aTIF (male 10.8 vs female 8.7, p = 0.035), gender concordance with senior authors (male 79.9% vs female 34.1%, p < 0.001), Hirsch index (male 21.0 vs female 18.0, p = 0.026), and the geographic region of their medical schools (p = 0.036). Multivariable linear regressions revealed that female interns were associated with lower TIF (0.858, p = 0.033) and aTIF (0.851, p = 0.044). Due to a significant gender-by-region interaction, adjusted pairwise comparisons showed that male interns in the Northeast had approximately 70% higher TIF (1.708, p = 0.003) and aTIF (1.697, p = 0.013) than female interns in the South.ConclusionsGender disparities existed in the quality of research experience in the earliest phase of surgical training. These timely results call for additional interventions by the stakeholders of graduate medical education.Copyright © 2023 by the American College of Surgeons. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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