Pregnancy during Residency

To identify possible barriers to women physicians who wish to combine parenting with medical careers, we studied 56 of 64 pregnancies from the past 10 years in 63 of 66 Harvard-affiliated residency programs. Pregnancies during residency were common (one in eight married women in 1983) and were usually planned (77 percent). Most institutions were unprepared for pregnancies among members of the house staff; four fifths of the programs had no maternity-leave policy. No one quit a residency program because of pregnancy, and pregnancy rarely affected achievement of board certification. Whether the pregnant women found pregnancy during residency a "pleasant" experience was determined largely by whether the program director was supportive, whether the issue of pregnancy was openly discussed within the program, and whether the woman was permitted to return to work on a part-time basis for the first weeks after maternity leave. We conclude that pregnancy within residency programs should be expected and planned for and that if proper arrangements are made, it need not be a major problem for either the training program or the pregnant resident. (N Engl J Med 1986; 314:418–23.) MEDICAL education has undergone profound changes in the past few decades. A house officer used to be an unmarried young man in a starched white uniform who performed his medical duties while residing in the hospital for several years. Today, however, a glance around medical training settings may reveal a resident in thoracic surgery rushing out of a late-scheduled operation to pick up his child at a day care facility or a medical resident in her seventh month of pregnancy running to a resuscitation in the intensive care unit. An increase in the number of women in all workplaces has . . .