Career Development in Pediatric Emergency Medicine: What Do We Need?

Objectives The Women in Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) subcommittee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Emergency Medicine identified 2 top priorities for 2021: career development and mentorship/sponsorship. The objective of this study was to catalog and delineate the career development domains for women physicians in PEM. Methods After a review of the literature to identify the key areas for gaps for women in PEM, we used Q sort methodology to elicit domains for this subcommittee to address by survey of a national sample. Results One hundred fourteen discrete potential areas of interest for career development were identified by the working group based on salient themes from the literature and personal experiences. Forty-one Women in PEM subcommittee members (27%) completed the survey. The career development topics were sorted into the domains of personal (40.4%; n = 46), administrative (28.1%; n = 32), research (10.5%; n = 12), teaching (10.5%; n = 12), service (7.0%; n = 8), and clinical (3.5%; n = 4). Conclusions This study demonstrates that the career development needs of women in PEM include a range of personal, teaching, research, administrative, clinical, and service domains. However, more than two-thirds of the career development topics were categorized into just 2 domains, administrative and personal.