Ending the burnout gender gap in surgery

In a survey of practicing surgeons across eleven academic medical centers, Dr. Mete et al. have once again demonstrated that burnout is exceedingly prevalent among surgeons, and particularly among women, occurring in nearly 50% of that group, compared to 33% of men.1 While these data should be considered a glaring indictment of the state of mental health within the general surgery professional community, the authors offer some glimmer of hope for the future that the striking rates of burnout among women surgeons may be mediated through modifiable factors related to the resources and demands of their profession. In consideration of the identified gender gap, the authors demonstrate that professional fulfillment and control over schedule mediate the observed difference between burnout rates among men and women. [...]research presented by Baker et al. where resident burnout was again found to be close to 50%, demonstrated that female residents were more likely to experience gender-specific harassment compared to male residents.4 While direct comparisons across these studies are not feasible due to differences in methodology, there exists here an evidentiary theme of culturally entrenched gender bias across the surgical continuum that begins in training and persists into practice.