Gastroenterology training and career choices: a prospective longitudinal study of the impact of gender and of managed care

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to determine if gender differences exist in the selection and training of female and male gastroenterology fellows. METHODS: One hundred seventy-six of 218 training program directors returned an 18-question survey about their programs, including leave policies, training, and prevalence of female faculty. Two cohorts of graduating trainees from 1993 and 1995 (N = 393) returned anonymous surveys regarding their training program experiences, demographics, and business training. RESULTS: Female gastroenterology trainees are more likely to choose programs according to parental leave policies (p < 0.05), female faculty (0.2990 correlation coefficient), and "family reasons" (p < 0.04) than the male trainees. Female trainees were more likely to remain childless (p < 0.001) or have fewer children at the end of training despite marital status not unlike their male colleagues. Female trainees altered their family planning because of training program restrictions (20% vs 7%, p < 0.001). They perceived gender discrimination (39%) and sexual harassment (19%) during gastroenterology training. Trainees of both sexes had mentorship during training (65% vs 71%, ns); female trainees were more likely to have an opposite sex mentor (71% vs 3.4%) despite an almost 50% prevalence of female full-time and clinical faculty. Female trainees were apt to be less trained in advanced endoscopy (p < 0.005). Trainees of both sexes were influenced by the changing health care environment in career choice (49% vs 42%, ns); neither gender felt adequately prepared for the business aspects of gastroenterology. CONCLUSION: Alterations in gastroenterology training are needed to attract qualified female applicants. New graduates of both sexes lack practice management education.     

Gastroenterology: Naming a discipline

Gastroenterology consolidated into a medical specialty toward the end of the nineteenth century, a development, however, long anticipated by medical terminology. The undefined neologisms gastridiologia and enterologia appear in the preface to a Latin work of medical aphorisms, dated 30 September 1655, by Erfurt physician Valentin Andreas Möllenbrock (1623–1675). Boerhaave and Cheselden used enterologia as an anatomical term from roughly the same date (1711); it is unclear who may have influenced whom. Hepatologie/hepatologia and hepatographie/hepatographia were coined in Tarin’s 1753 Dictionnaire anatomique, to denote putative anatomical sub-disciplines.     

Autobiography: the negotiation of a lifetime

Throughout reminiscence and life review literature there is a prevailing tendency to interpret studies in a developmentalist perspective. Another approach to consider is the interpretive. It not only incorporates the former's insight, but also attempts to explain its inconsistencies by examining the other equally important factors operating in these studies. Following a discussion of both the developmentalist and the interpretive approach, I examine a number of studies on reminiscence and the life review. This study uses the interpretive approach, particularly Goffman's dramaturgical approach, to further understand the objective of reminiscence and to see how the social element emphasized by the interpretive approach can in fact be the deciding factor in the consequent adjustment or maladjustment of the older person.     

Creating a Pathway to Leadership for Women in Gastroenterology

Digestive Diseases and Sciences -