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Background: Women in medicine continue to experience disparities in earnings, promotion, and leadership roles. There are few guidelines in place defining organization-level factors that promote a supportive workplace environment beneficial to women in emergency medicine (EM). We assembled a working group with the goal of developing specific and feasible recommendations to support women's professional development in both community and academic EM settings., Methods: We formed a working group from the leadership of two EM women's organizations, the Academy of Women in Academic Emergency Medicine (AWAEM) and the American Association of Women Emergency Physicians (AAWEP). Through a literature search and discussion, working group members identified four domains where organizational policies and practices supportive of women were needed: 1) global approaches to supporting the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in EM; 2) recruitment, hiring, and compensation of women emergency physicians; 3) supporting development and advancement of women in EM; and 4) physician health and wellness (in the context of pregnancy, childbirth, and maternity leave). Within each of these domains, the working group created an initial set of specific recommendations. The working group then recruited a stakeholder group of EM physician leaders across the country, selecting for diversity in practice setting, geographic location, age, race, and gender. Stakeholders were asked to score and provide feedback on each of the recommendations. Specific recommendations were retained by the working group if they achieved high rates of approval from the stakeholder group for importance and perceived feasibility. Those with >80% agreement on importance and >50% agreement on feasibility were retained. Finally, recommendations were posted in an open online forum (blog) and invited public commentary., Results: An initial set of 29 potential recommendations was created by the working group. After stakeholder voting and feedback, 16 final recommendations were retained. Recommendations were refined through qualitative comments from stakeholders and blog respondents., Conclusions: Using a consensus building process that included male and female stakeholders from both academic and community EM settings, we developed recommendations for organizations to implement to create a workplace environment supportive of women in EM that were perceived as acceptable and feasible. This process may serve as a model for other medical specialties to establish clear, discrete organization-level practices aimed at supporting women physicians., (© 2016 by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.)

The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) convened a taskforce to study issues pertaining to women in academic emergency medicine (EM). The charge to the Taskforce was to "Create a document for the SAEM Board of Directors that defines and describes the unique recruitment, retention, and advancement needs for women in academic emergency medicine." To this end, the Taskforce and authors reviewed the literature to highlight key data points in understanding this issue and made recommendations for individuals at four levels of leadership and accountability: leadership of national EM organizations, medical school deans, department chairs, and individual women faculty members. The broad range of individuals targeted for recommendations reflects the interdependent and shared responsibility required to address changes in the culture of academic EM. The following method was used to determine the recommendations: 1) Taskforce members discussed career barriers and potential solutions that could improve the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in academic EM; 2) the authors reviewed recommendations in the literature by national consensus groups and experts in the field to validate the recommendations of Taskforce members and the authors; and 3) final recommendations were sent to all Taskforce members to obtain and incorporate additional comments and ensure a consensus. This article contains those recommendations and cites the relevant literature addressing this topic.

Objectives: Despite the influx of female physicians in academic medicine departments, there are a small number of women in faculty and departmental leadership positions in emergency medicine (EM). The objective of this study was to determine if the gender of the chairperson of an academic EM department is associated with the gender of the residency program director (RPD) and gender proportion of its faculty., Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of 133 academic EM departments using the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine online residency catalog, program Web site, or e-mail. Main outcome measures were proportion of female EM faculty and gender of the RPD., Results: Data were available for 133 academic departments. Women chaired 7.5% (n = 10) of departments and comprised 22.3% of all faculty and 15.0% (n = 20) of RPD positions. EM departments that were chaired by women had a significantly higher percentage of female faculty compared with those led by men (31% vs. 22%; p = 0.01). Similarly, departments that were chaired by women had a significantly higher proportion of female RPDs compared with those chaired by men (50% vs. 12%; p < 0.01). Compared with departments chaired by men, the RPD was 5.0 times (95% confidence interval = 1.9 to 27.8; p < 0.01) more likely to be a woman if the chairperson was also a woman., Conclusions: An academic EM department was more likely to have a higher proportion of female faculty and a female RPD when the department chairperson was female.