MONDAY, July 19 (HealthDay News) -- A surgery resident's decision to pursue fellowship training is largely due to a desire for clinical mastery and specialty activities regardless of gender, with lifestyle factors of only midrange importance and program size appearing more influential than gender, according to research published in the July issue of the Archives of Surgery.

Karen R. Borman, M.D., of the University of Central Florida College of Medicine in Orlando, and colleagues conducted a prospective, voluntary, national survey of 1,034 general surgery chief residents who applied to enter the American Board of Surgery Qualifying Examination process. The researchers wanted to determine the most important factors related to making decisions about pursuing fellowship training and the relationships of these to gender and residency characteristics.

The authors found that 77 percent of the study group planned to pursue fellowship training; this decision correlated with geographic site of the residency program and the size of residency program. The distribution of females electing fellowship was distributed similarly across residency programs to that of males electing fellowship. More than 90 percent of both genders placed clinical mastery and specialty activities as their highest values, although men valued income potential and spousal influence more than women. Both genders ranked lifestyle considerations as only moderately important, and program size outweighed gender in significance as a decision making factor.

"We conclude that motivations for pursuing fellowships after general surgery residencies largely are gender neutral. Residency characteristics are as influential as gender. Lifestyle considerations are secondary to mastery of a clinical content area and to the clinical activities of the specialty," the authors write.

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