More residents building families during training

Having children isn ’t easy, but intense medical training, limited parental leave and a shrinking workforce make building a family even more difficult. With more residents working to build their families during training, a new study looks at the trends and calls on graduate medical education (GME) to improve policies to increase work-life balance for residents.Who is having children and when According to a 1983 survey, about 13 percent of female residents became pregnant during residency. More recently, that number has increased significantly, demonstrating that residents are spending their GME years building families. About 40 percent of physician trainees plan to have a child during their graduate medical education training, according to astudy in the July issue ofAcademic Medicine. Researchers gathered information about pregnancy, institutional policies and parental leave from nearly 650 male and female trainees at Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education sites in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona. Among the physicians in training, 41 percent had children and 7 percent were currently pregnant themselves or had a partner who was pregnant. Among the 41 percent who had children, researchers learned:Most pregnancies occur during the GME years. Among the 398 pregnancies researchers had details on, about three quarters of pregnancies occurred during GME.More men report having children than women. About 35 percent of female residents reported having children compared to 47 pe...
Source: AMA Wire - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Source Type: news