Availability of Lactation Policies and Facilities for ACGME-Accredited Surgical Residency Training Programs

We aimed to investigate availability of lactation policy and facility information among surgical residency programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

Between March 1, 2023 and October 31, 2023, websites of surgical residency training programs on the ACGME Accreditation System List of Programs by Specialty were reviewed for department lactation policies, links to institutional graduate medical education (GME) websites with lactation policies, lists of lactation facilities, and links to institutional GME websites listing lactation facilities. Scatter plots were generated and Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to assess relationships of the percentages of female residents, fellows, and faculty in each surgical specialty with the percentage of residency program websites with available lactation information.

In total, 1847 websites were reviewed. Seventeen (0.9%) had lactation policies, 31 (1.7%) had lists of lactation facilities, 231 (12.5%) had links to institutional websites with lactation policies, and 295 (16.%) had links to institutional websites with lists of lactation facilities. The percentage of female residents and fellows and percentage of female faculty were positively correlated with the percentage of residency program websites with available lactation information.

Limited information on lactation policies and facilities is available to surgical residents.