Elements of Pregnancy and Parenthood Policies of Importance to Medical Students and Included in a Sample of Medical Schools' Websites and Student Handbooks

Abstract

Background: Medical students who are parents or considering parenthood often want information about school policies. An earlier survey of 194 medical students from one U.S. school examined seven “elements that [students thought] should be included in a school policy on pregnancy/maternity leave.” For example, students want to know “how much time a student can take off during medical school and still graduate with their class.” We performed multivariate and multivariable analyses of the University of South Dakota survey to understand its generalizability and usefulness. Methods: The earlier survey also included 35 demographic variables about individual students. We tested empirically for associations between the demographics and the seven policy items, thereby evaluating generalizability of the survey results to different demographic groups. We then surveyed public websites of a sample of U.S. medical schools to evaluate usefulness of the knowledge of the seven items. For the 33 surveyed schools, we documented if each of the items was present on publicly available webpages and handbooks. Results: The seven items had content validity as a necessary and sufficient set of items. There also were no significant associations of the items with demographic variables. Therefore, there is little chance that differences among medical schools in their average demographic would affect the items needed for their websites and student handbooks. Among the surveyed medical school websites, 1 of 33 had all seven items (upper 95% confidence limit: 14% of schools nationally would be expected to have all seven items shown). Conclusions: These findings show that it is known what information students want to know about in a school policy on pregnancy and parental leave. Adding these items to public websites is a necessary and an easily actionable intervention to help current and future medical students.

Pregnancy and parental leave policies at Australian and New Zealand medical schools

“…Overall, there was a lack of documentation and formalized processes related to the support of this group of students. Although the findings presented here are specific to the ANZ context, they resonate with those reported by others, [7][8][9] and with a cohort of up to 10% of medical students commencing medical school with parenting responsibilities or becoming parents during medical school, this is an area which requires attention.…”

“…Augmenting existing policies with procedures to provide an explanation of how to apply a leave policy to the medical school context would avoid the risk of sending a message to students that entry-to-practice medical courses may not recognize, support or assist them to fulfil their needs during pregnancy or as parents. Studies in the United States 8 , 9 and internationally 17 , 18 have surveyed medical students’ perspectives of what they consider the key characteristics of family-friendly medical schools. These found that despite cultural and geographic differences, students consistently reported they wanted schools to provide clear and reliable information regarding leave for students who are pregnant or parents.…”

“…Existing literature 8 , 9 has attempted to examine the views and experiences of medical students who are pregnant or have parental responsibilities. This was via a series of open-ended questions, and while providing some insight into the lived experience, this type of methodology has the potential to suffer from a lack of conceptual richness because the data can often consist of a few sentences or less.…”

“…This included qualitative feedback from students on how best medical schools can assist students during pregnancy and parenthood. 8 , 9 …”

“…This included qualitative feedback from students on how best medical schools can assist students during pregnancy and parenthood. 8,9 In ANZ, 10,11 pregnancy and parental status is protected by national anti-discrimination legislation. This legislation articulates it is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against an employee on various grounds including sex, pregnancy, potential pregnancy, breastfeeding and/or family responsibilities.…”