BRIEF REPORT: health care provided by program directors to their resident physicians and families

Who provides health care to resident physicians is not well studied.

To determine whether residency program directors (PDs)provide health care to their own residents and residents' families.

An anonymous survey mailed to 1,345 PDs in Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Medicine-Pediatrics,and Obstetrics-Gynecology in the United States in 2003.

Six hundred nineteen PDs (46%) responded. Half had taken care of their own residents for acute conditions. Less commonly, directors had written prescriptions for acute (40%) or chronic needs (15%}or provided ongoing care (22%). Only 3% believed this conflicted with their ability to be effective directors. Responders more likely to provide future care to residents considered this kind of care generally appropriate(P< .001), or appropriate under certain circumstances {P< .001).Most of these spent > 31% of their time seeing patients. There was no difference among types of programs, gender of the director, or the years as director. Twenty-five percent of directors provided care to their residents' families.

Substantial numbers of directors provided healthcare to their own residents. Few believed this conflicted with their director role. We believe organizations of PDs should develop positions about this practice.