Professional Satisfaction of Women in Surgery

Abstract

Individual, group, and organizational factors influence the professional satisfaction of women surgeons in Austria. Design: Survey on professional and private issues sent out by mail in 2000 and 2001. Setting: Women surgeons working in hospitals and/or in private practices and those who were retired or on maternity leave. Participants: All 351 Austrian women surgeons of all core surgical specialties (general, trauma, pediatric, plastic, thoracic, and cardiovascular), certified or in training, were addressed. Main Outcome Measures: Proportional odds regression models were used to correlate professional satisfaction with objectively measurable prognostic factors such as age, surgical subspecialty, status of training, type of hospital, location of work (federal states vs the capital), status of activity (active vs on maternity leave), profession of private partner, number of children, and subjectively assessed prog-nostic factors such as operative volume and departmental organization. Results: The response rate was 58.7% (206/351). One hundred eighty-seven surgeons-active or on maternity leavewere included in the analysis. Higher satisfaction was reported by active surgeons in subspecialties, certified surgeons, comparatively younger and older surgeons, surgeons working in hospitals outside the capital, and surgeons with a physician as a partner. When entering subjectively assessed variables into the model, the quality of departmental organization and operative volume (PϽ.001), as well as the status of activity (PϽ.001), had the strongest effect. Conclusions: Women surgeons' professional satisfaction highly depends on departmental organization and status of activity. Inadequate leadership, low operative volume, and being on maternity leave have a negative effect on job satisfaction. Private factors seem to be of little influence. Optimal departmental organization would help women to reconcile their professional and their private lives.

Surgical culture in transition: gender matters and generation counts

“…6,26 While the challenges of taking maternity leave, as experienced by female surgeons, have been reported previously, to our knowledge our study is the first to reveal the positive perspective of their male colleagues. 1,2,7,8,27 This is an important finding, as prior research suggests that support offered by colleagues enhances physician well-being and to some degree ameliorates stress related to excessive work demands. In other words, the instrumental and emotional support provided by the male surgeons to their female colleagues during pregnancy and maternity leave could make the women's experience less stressful, both personally and professionally.…”

“…1,2,4,5,7,10,11,24,25 This qualitative study adds important information to this literature by illuminating the in-depth experiences of academic surgeons, both women and men, on this key issue.…”

“…[1][2][3] Over the last 2 decades, there has been a growing interest in the challenges faced by female surgeons. 1,2,[4][5][6][7][8] Studies have examined the deterrents to choosing a surgical career as well as the barriers, such as a lack of mentors, childbearing and child care, workload and lifestyle issues, to women pursuing an academic position in surgery.…”

Returning to Work After Maternity Leave: Childcare and Workplace Flexibility

“…For female medical doctors returning to work after maternity leave, the provision of suitable childcare with extended opening hours located on-site is important (End et al, 2004;Verlander, 2004). In the study of female medical doctors by Potee et al (1999), nannies had provided the greatest amount of childcare.…”

Happy Mother’s Day

“…A study of Austrian women surgeons showed that professional satisfaction was lowest in surgeons between 40 and 50 years old. 4 Although women without children seemed slightly more satisfied than those who were mothers, this mid-career dip was attributed to other factors related to work environment. However, a much larger and more recent study by Dyrbye compared burnout and satisfaction between male and female members of the American College of Surgeons.…”