Gender Differences in Authorship of Clinical Problem-Solving Articles

Authors of clinical reasoning exercises analyze diagnostic dilemmas and serve as role models of clinical excellence. We investigated the percentage of women authors in the clinical problem-solving series of three general medicine journals from the inaugural article in each series until July 2019. Women were underrepresented among first, last, and all authors. While the percentage of women among first and all authors has increased, women still constituted <40% of all authors and ≤25% of last authors, and there have been no significant increases in women last authors in any of the three journals. Including more women in clinical reasoning exercises is an opportunity to amplify the voices of women as master clinicians.