A comprehensive analysis of diversity in Türkiye's intensive care medicine: Leadership, workforce and authorship

Diversity in intensive care medicine (ICM) contributes to equity, team performance, and innovation. However, international data highlight persistent gender disparities in leadership, authorship, and specialty composition. While Türkiye appears to have balanced gender representation in critical care, a national analysis has been lacking.

This descriptive study evaluated gender and specialty diversity among ICM professionals in Türkiye across five domains: (1)national society leadership, (2)congress speaker rosters, (3)fellowship program directors, (4)ICM specialists, and (5)Türkiye-based PubMed-indexed ICM publications between 2015 and 2025. Data were collected from public records, institutional websites, and structured database searches.

One of the two national societies demonstrated strong female leadership, with 55.6 % female presidents since 2005. Congress speaker data from 2004 to 2024 (n = 1567) showed increasing female representation (n = 635, 40.5 %), reaching near parity in recent years. Among 53 fellowship programs, 45.3 % of directors were female. ICM specialists (n = 571) had a near-equal gender distribution (50.6 % female). Anesthesiology was the dominant primary specialty (54.6 %) among ICM specialists. In ICM publications from Türkiye indexed in PubMed, women represented 41.6 % of all authors (n = 7073) across 1107 ICM publications, with 59.0 % led by a female first or last author.

Türkiye shows encouraging trends in gender equity across clinical and academic ICM. These gains may reflect equitable public policies, gender-balanced specialty pipelines, and visible female role models. While challenges remain-particularly in senior authorship and society leadership-Türkiye's experience may offer valuable lessons for global equity in ICM. Further research should explore other dimensions, including race/ethnicity and socioeconomic background, which are underreported in current systems.