Gender Differences in Professional Adversities and Mental Health Among Surgical and Nonsurgical Medical Trainees: An Internet-Based Survey

BACKGROUND: Physicians in training face a variety of stressors throughout their professional development and according to their gender. Among them, surgical trainees appear to be especially at risk for mental health problems.OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to com-pare demographic features, professional activities and adversities, depression, anxiety, and distress among men and women trainees of surgical and nonsurgical medical specialties.DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: A cross-sectional, retro-spective, comparative study was conducted on a total of 12,424 trainees (68.7% nonsurgical and 31.3% surgical) from Mexico through an online survey. Demographic features, variables related to professional activities and adversities, depression, anxiety, and distress were evalu-ated through self-administered measures. Comparative analyses using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test for cate-gorical variables and multivariate analysis of variance including medical residency program and gender as fixed factors to test their interaction effect for continu-ous variables were used.RESULTS: An important interaction between medical spe-cialty and gender was found. Women trainees from surgical specialties report more frequent psychological and physi-cal aggressions. Women from both specialties had higher distress, significant anxiety, and depression than men. Men from surgical specialties worked more hours per day.CONCLUSIONS: Gender differences are evident in train-ees for medical specialties, with a larger impact in surgi-cal fields. Mistreatment of students is a pervasive behavior that affects society as a whole, and actions to improve learning and working environments in all medi-cal specialties, but mostly in surgical fields, are urgently needed. ( J Surg Ed 80:666-675. (c) 2023 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)