Gender disparity in women's health training at a family medicine residency program

Abstract

Background and objectives: Women's health services are an important part of the practice of family medicine. Anecdotally, family medicine residents' training experience in certain aspects of women's health differs based on the trainees' gender.

Methods: We conducted 5-year retrospective evaluation of acute and preventive women's health encounters at one site. Total number of visits, type of visits, and visits by resident year were compared between male and female residents. We also compared mean women's health in-service examination training scores, by year of training, for male and female residents.

Results: Male residents cared for a total 13% of the 3,415 women's health visits while female residents performed 59.5% of the visits; the remainder of visits were to faculty and other practitioners. Female resident physicians cared for 86% of all preventive and 91% of all acute women's health visits performed by residents. Female residents also had a significantly higher mean number of women's health visits per resident than did male residents (63 versus 20). Female residents' mean score of 56.8 (95% CI=51.1--62.0) on the women's health section of the in-service exam was significantly higher than male residents' mean score of 41.7 (95% CI=34.9--48.5).

Conclusions: This study demonstrates discrepancies by gender in the exposure of family medicine residents to women's health cases and their knowledge about women's health.