Photo Credit: Andrey Popov

The following is a summary of “Where Are They Now? Attrition Rates of Emergency Medicine Residency Graduates by Gender,” published in the November 2024 issue of Emergency Medicine by Salker et al. 

Researchers conducted a retrospective study to determine the significant differences in attrition rates between male and female emergency physicians within a 10–30-year post-residency timeframe and explored potential gender disparities in geographic practice location, academic pursuits, and community-based practice.  

They tracked graduates’ employment from allopathic emergency medicine residency programs established before 2005, focusing on those who graduated before 2010. The graduate lists were obtained from 21 geographically diverse residency programs across the United States. Public databases were used to determine current licensure, board certification, practice location, and occupation for graduates more than 10 years post-residency. The Graduates not practicing emergency medicine or subspecialties were categorized as “attrition,” while those with insufficient online information were marked as “not available” and attrition differences between men and women emergency physicians in clinical practice in 2020 were analyzed. Additional analyses included practice settings (academic or community) and geographic regions.  

The results showed that 4,170 emergency medicine residency graduates, 10.6% (445) were excluded due to incomplete data, leaving 3,725 for analysis. Male graduates constituted 71%, the attrition rate from clinical emergency medicine was 5.3% (95% CI, 4.4% to 6.1%) for men and 5.8% (95% CI, 4.4% to 7.2%) for women. The difference in attrition rates between genders was negligible, with a difference of -0.005 (95% CI, -0.02 to 0.01). No significant gender disparities were observed in terms of geographic practice location or practice type (academic vs community).  

Investigators concluded no gender differences in attrition rates were observed in this 30-year cohort from 21 programs, contrasting with trends among recent emergency medicine graduates. 

Source: annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(24)01112-0/abstract