A National Assessment of Well-being and Mistreatment Among Academic General Surgery Faculty

To define the prevalence of poor faculty well-being and workplace mistreatment and investigate factors impacting surgical faculty well-being.

Recent qualitative data suggests that faculty well-being has been largely unaddressed. Rates of poor faculty well-being are undefined and workplace factors influencing well-being are poorly characterized.

A national cross-sectional survey was sent to all general surgery faculty through the ACGME in 2024. Multivariable logistic regression models evaluated associations of faculty and departmental characteristics with measures of well-being.

Responses from 3253 (30.0% response rate) surgical faculty from all 350 general surgery programs were analyzed. Weekly burnout symptoms were reported by 34.9% of faculty, thoughts of attrition were reported by 30.2%, and suicidal thoughts were reported by 4.4%. Mistreatment was reported by 66.2% of faculty (n= 2132), including bullying (54.4%), discrimination (46.3%), or sexual harassment (13.2%). Women reported significantly higher mistreatment (88.6% vs. 55.7%, P <0.001). Faculty were more likely to report burnout if they were women (OR 1.30, 95% CI: 1.06-1.60) or working >70 hours/week (aOR 2.09, 95% CI: 1.63-2.68) or >7 nights on call/month on average (aOR 1.58, 95% CI: 1.30-1.93). Faculty were more likely to consider leaving their job if they were non-White (aOR 1.25, 95% CI: 1.04-1.51), childless (aOR 1.32, 95% CI: 1.05-1.67), or making < $350K (aOR 2.00, 95% CI: 1.34-2.97). After adjusting for mistreatment, the association between gender and burnout was no longer observed (aOR 0.95, 95% CI: 0.77-1.18).

Burnout and mistreatment are common, especially among female surgeons, which may be driven by differential workplace mistreatment. These results provide actionable targets for interventions within institutions to improve surgeon well-being.