• Katherine M Gerull, Maren Loe, Kristen Seiler, Jared McAllister, and Arghavan Salles.
• Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, United States.
• Am. J. Surg. 2019 Feb 1; 217 (2): 306-313.

BackgroundThere are notable disparities in the training, recruitment, promotion, and evaluation of men and women in surgery. The qualitative assessment of surgical residents may be implicitly gender biased.MethodsWe used inductive analysis to identify themes in written evaluations of residents. We also performed a content analysis of words fitting previously defined communal, grindstone, ability, and standout categories.ResultsDifferences in themes that emerged from evaluations of male and female residents were notable regarding overall performance, references to the future, professional competency, job domains, disposition and humanism, and overall tone of evaluations. Comments about men were more positive than those about women, and evaluations of men included more standout words.ConclusionsThe more positive evaluations of men may handicap women if they are seen as less likely to perform well based on these evaluations. These differences suggest that implicit bias may play a role in the qualitative evaluation of surgical residents.Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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