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Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia

BACKGROUND: While female participation has improved in several surgical specialties over time globally, no such increase has been observed in orthopaedic surgery over the past decades. The potential barriers to female participation are likely present from the beginning of medical education. Therefor...

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Autores principales: Alomar, Abdulaziz Z., Almonaie, Shahd, Nagshabandi, Khalid Nabil, AlGhufaili, Deema, Alomar, Manar
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9825039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36611180
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13018-022-03487-6
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author Alomar, Abdulaziz Z.
Almonaie, Shahd
Nagshabandi, Khalid Nabil
AlGhufaili, Deema
Alomar, Manar
author_facet Alomar, Abdulaziz Z.
Almonaie, Shahd
Nagshabandi, Khalid Nabil
AlGhufaili, Deema
Alomar, Manar
author_sort Alomar, Abdulaziz Z.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: While female participation has improved in several surgical specialties over time globally, no such increase has been observed in orthopaedic surgery over the past decades. The potential barriers to female participation are likely present from the beginning of medical education. Therefore, this study assessed the apparent lag in equal representation among men and women in orthopaedic surgery in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. METHODS: This cross-sectional study used a questionnaire survey to investigate medical students’ and interns’ perceptions of women participating in orthopaedic surgery, their subspeciality preferences, and barriers preventing them from pursuing an orthopaedic career. The responses were analysed to understand general perceptions, gender-based differences, impact of clinical experiential learning, and exposure to orthopaedic surgery. RESULTS: Approximately 565 medical students (49% females, 51% males) participated in the survey. Only 17% of students (11% females, 23% males) considered orthopaedic surgery as their future career option. While 31% of female and 17% of male students disagreed with the concept of female-appropriate orthopaedic subspecialties, most of the remaining male and female students perceived paediatric orthopaedics as a female-appropriate subspecialty. Concerning equal representation of women, gender bias and lack of a strong physique were the most frequently selected barriers by female and male students, respectively. Patient preference for male orthopaedicians, gender discrimination, social and family commitments, and need for physical strength were all perceived as barriers for women in orthopaedics. Overall, clinical experience and orthopaedic exposure did not significantly improve the likelihood of female students in choosing orthopaedic surgery as a career. CONCLUSIONS: The bias against women in orthopaedic careers is prevalent among medical students early in their academic years. Clinical experience and exposure to orthopaedic surgery should be improved to make a significant impact on female participation in orthopaedic careers. Career building efforts in terms of improved career opportunities, career counselling, flexible working hours, social and family related adjustments and implementation of mentorship/research/fellowship programmes for females are needed to reduce gender discrimination and improve female orthopaedic participation. Furthermore, process improvements may yield greater flexibility for women pursuing the challenging field while accommodating other barriers faced by women in orthopaedic surgery. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13018-022-03487-6.
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spelling pubmed-98250392023-01-08 Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia Alomar, Abdulaziz Z. Almonaie, Shahd Nagshabandi, Khalid Nabil AlGhufaili, Deema Alomar, Manar J Orthop Surg Res Research Article BACKGROUND: While female participation has improved in several surgical specialties over time globally, no such increase has been observed in orthopaedic surgery over the past decades. The potential barriers to female participation are likely present from the beginning of medical education. Therefore, this study assessed the apparent lag in equal representation among men and women in orthopaedic surgery in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. METHODS: This cross-sectional study used a questionnaire survey to investigate medical students’ and interns’ perceptions of women participating in orthopaedic surgery, their subspeciality preferences, and barriers preventing them from pursuing an orthopaedic career. The responses were analysed to understand general perceptions, gender-based differences, impact of clinical experiential learning, and exposure to orthopaedic surgery. RESULTS: Approximately 565 medical students (49% females, 51% males) participated in the survey. Only 17% of students (11% females, 23% males) considered orthopaedic surgery as their future career option. While 31% of female and 17% of male students disagreed with the concept of female-appropriate orthopaedic subspecialties, most of the remaining male and female students perceived paediatric orthopaedics as a female-appropriate subspecialty. Concerning equal representation of women, gender bias and lack of a strong physique were the most frequently selected barriers by female and male students, respectively. Patient preference for male orthopaedicians, gender discrimination, social and family commitments, and need for physical strength were all perceived as barriers for women in orthopaedics. Overall, clinical experience and orthopaedic exposure did not significantly improve the likelihood of female students in choosing orthopaedic surgery as a career. CONCLUSIONS: The bias against women in orthopaedic careers is prevalent among medical students early in their academic years. Clinical experience and exposure to orthopaedic surgery should be improved to make a significant impact on female participation in orthopaedic careers. Career building efforts in terms of improved career opportunities, career counselling, flexible working hours, social and family related adjustments and implementation of mentorship/research/fellowship programmes for females are needed to reduce gender discrimination and improve female orthopaedic participation. Furthermore, process improvements may yield greater flexibility for women pursuing the challenging field while accommodating other barriers faced by women in orthopaedic surgery. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13018-022-03487-6. BioMed Central 2023-01-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9825039/ /pubmed/36611180 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13018-022-03487-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Alomar, Abdulaziz Z.
Almonaie, Shahd
Nagshabandi, Khalid Nabil
AlGhufaili, Deema
Alomar, Manar
Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia
title Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia
title_full Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia
title_fullStr Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia
title_full_unstemmed Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia
title_short Representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in Saudi Arabia
title_sort representation of women in orthopaedic surgery: perception of barriers among undergraduate medical students in saudi arabia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9825039/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36611180
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13018-022-03487-6
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