A comparison of operative autonomy between men and women in orthopaedic surgical training in Aotearoa New Zealand.

AIM

Recent studies have shown that women training in surgical and procedural specialties achieve less operative autonomy during training than men do. The aim of this study was to discern if there is a disparity in surgical autonomy for orthopaedic trainees by gender.

METHODS

This was a retrospective study of operative procedures performed by 53 orthopaedic trainees (43 men, 10 women) in Aotearoa New Zealand over 10 years. The main outcome measure was the amount of surgical autonomy afforded to individual trainees as recorded in the training logbook, categorised as assisting a: primary surgeon with consultant scrubbed or present; or, primary surgeon unsupervised and teaching a colleague the procedure.

RESULTS

Data was obtained for 41,622 procedures in total. Eighty point seven percent were performed by men and 19.3% by women. On average men performed 229 cases per year and women performed 251 cases per year. There was an overall significant difference in autonomy between men and women (p <0.001), with men performing more procedures unsupervised than women (45% of all cases versus 39% of all cases). This difference remained significant when trainee year group was accounted for.

CONCLUSIONS

We conclude that women orthopaedic trainees in Aotearoa New Zealand perform fewer cases with meaningful autonomy than men. This disparity may have implications for the quality of training received by men versus women.