Female Mentorship in Academic Emergency Medicine
Abstract
Learning Objectives: To determine if women in Emergency Medicine academic leadership roles received female mentorship during or after residency and whether this impacted their decision to pursue their current positions.
Background: A publication in 2006 by Cheng et al demonstrated there is an increased proportion of female faculty in academic Emergency Medicine (EM) when the chairperson is female. Current literature has not discussed whether female mentorship has any relationship to the prevalence of women in leadership roles in academic EM.
Objective: To determine if women in EM academic leadership roles received female mentorship during or after residency and whether this impacted their decision to pursue their current positions.
Methods: Public websites in combination with the CORD member directory were used to extract the gender and contact information of the program directors (PDs) and associate program directors (APDs) for all ACGME accredited categorical EM programs during the 2020-2021 academic year. A survey was emailed to female PDs and APDs using the Redcap program to collect the following data: if they had a female mentor during and/or after residency, the rank of their female mentor, and if their mentor influenced their decision to pursue an academic leadership position. Demographic information was also obtained. An optional comment section was included in the survey to provide for additional information regarding mentorship experience. Descriptive statistics included percentage response distributions.
Results: Of the 298 EM female academic leaders, 130 (43.6%) responded to the survey. Half of the female PDs and APDs surveyed had a female mentor during residency and/or post residency. Of these, about 63% stated that their female mentor post residency influenced their decision to pursue their current academic role.
Conclusion: Post residency female mentorship is a contributing factor in influencing female EM program leaders to pursue these roles. The main limitation was this was a survey study with a response rate of under 50%. Further studies will be needed to determine other factors that influence female academic leadership to pursue these positions.