DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Can You Tell I’m Pregnant? SAEM PULSE | MAY-JUNE 2022
By Michelle Suh, MD, on behalf of the SAEM Academy for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Medicine
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Can you tell I’m pregnant? I don’t want people to know until after I match.” As the fourth-year medical student turned to her side, the other applicants and I tried to tell if we could see any telltale bump. Now three years later, on the other side of the now virtual residency application process, I have grown familiar with the regular cadence of recruitment conversations about a program’s acuity, the city’s benefits, then the sudden awkwardness before
an applicant hesitantly asks if there’s a parental leave policy. As an emergency medicine resident, I have watched eagerly as residency programs roll out initiatives to try to increase racial diversity among trainees. However, emergency medicine must do better to support trainees trying to be parents during residency. Emergency medicine should discuss issues of family planning and parental leave more openly, as it is an issue
that affects all genders. Even writing this article, I have an urge to clarify that I am not pregnant nor planning to have children until my formal training is complete. Additionally, parental leave is not an issue exclusively for women or even applicable for all women. As Dr. Anita Chary astutely observed in a recent ACEP Now article, conflating women’s issues with motherhood reinforces an oversimplified view of women as a homogenous group with
