Fertility Preservation and Infertility Treatment in Female Surgical Trainees in Alberta: A Survey of Trainee Knowledge, Attitudes, and Needs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to describe fertility knowledge and views on family planning and fertility preservation/treatment among female surgical trainees in Alberta. METHODS: A voluntary, anonymous online survey was sent to surgical program coordinators in Alberta to forward to their respective trainees. Participants included surgical trainees from cardiac surgery, general surgery, neurosurgery, obstetrics and gynaecology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics, otolaryngology, plastic surgery, urology, and vascular surgery. Questions assessed demographics, fertility knowledge, reproductive history, family planning views, and attitudes towards fertility preservation/treatment. The primary outcome were the needs of trainees regarding fertility preservation/treatment. Secondary outcomes included fertility knowledge, reproductive history, family planning views, and attitudes towards fertility preservation/treatment. RESULTS: The survey had a 71.8% response rate, with 125 responses analyzed. The median score for fertility knowledge was 3 out of 6. Most trainees (84.8%) were childless, with 68.0% citing career impact as a significant factor in delaying child-bearing. Career aspirations, training duration, and long work hours were identified as top factors impacting family planning. Only 3.2% had undergone oocyte cryopreservation, while 48.0% had considered it. Awareness of oocyte cryopreservation options and insurance coverage was low. During their training, 57.6% of trainees had received no counselling about family planning. CONCLUSIONS: Female surgical trainees in Alberta face significant fertility concerns, exacerbated by gaps in fertility knowledge and career demands delaying child-bearing. There is strong interest in fertility preservation, but barriers include lack of awareness, financial constraints, and inadequate counselling. Enhanced education, counselling, insurance coverage, and supportive policies are needed to support trainees' reproductive and career goals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".