Addressing Disparities in Resident Attrition

Attrition in surgical education can result from myriad factors that affect a trainee's experience during the challenging and formative years of residency. We commend the authors on approaching this important topic with a data-driven, broad approach, encompassing nearly 20 years and 10 separate surgical subspecialties. Data drives change and without it we are at risk of remaining ignorant to disparities such as those so clearly demonstrated in this and other articles. The strikingly disparate levels of attrition demonstrated for trainees who are underrepresented in medicine (URiM) exposes some very real and concerning findings for our specialty.