Table 5:

Burden, Mentorship and Sense of Belonging

Theme	Exemplar Quotations
Burden	Q58: “You have to sort of stop the flow of a setup… and that takes significant time and I think, especially as residents, we don’t want to be using some of our training time for those types of adjustments.” Q59: “And as I think many surgical trainees can relate to that’s like the last thing that people are willing to spend time on with you. They just want to get their day moving forward. And so when you’re like, ‘Oh… can I move the microscope or adjust the table height?’ That’s a big ask.”
Asking for help	Q60: “I have to think about [my step stool] and I have to feel bad and [I say] “oh sorry, do you mind? I’m so sorry. Do you mind moving my standing stool?” and people like looking at you like “oh god, again”... and I have to do it every day.” Q61: “I have to roam operating rooms. I have to find really nice circulators and scrub nurses who will help me find my gloves. I have to ask the materials supply people to help me find gloves… it’s actually really stressful and really frustrating… And it’s like a lot of time that I spend on trying to find them. Just to be able to do my job.”
Sense of Belonging	Q62: “They’re not stocking enough of this type of equipment, if clearly it’s being pulled around... between rooms as the number of female surgeons goes up… I don’t feel like I don’t belong. But would I be more welcome?” Q63: “Sometimes you feel like you’re never going to as high as you could be if you had a different body.”
Negative view of technical skills	Q64: “There’s kind of like a culture where you know there’s something wrong with you or you just don’t get it if you think [specific surgical maneuvers are] uncomfortable” Q65: “Sometimes it makes me feel… more intimidated and a little bit more like I had more obstacles in the way of advancing surgically.”
Similar-Sized Role Models	Q66: “I think like some of the positive things are when I’ve had female attendings who have shared with me what works for them… so I’ve found those experiences to be really important and empowering” Q67: “What was empowering for me as a trainee was female attendings with similar hand size and similar physique showing me how to how to intubate, how to palm an instrument.”
Emphasis on Ergonomics	Q68: “One attending [said to me] ‘Hey, I know this has been a struggle for you… Why don’t we use this case? Why don’t we work on it?’… And I carried that with me. It doesn’t take a lot, it doesn’t need to be every time… but somebody to just take the time one time and give me the framework so I can figure it out for myself down the line. It’s huge.” Q69: “I can remember specifically there were a couple of attendings that really come to mind… who were just really dedicated to be like, ‘You look uncomfortable. Let’s figure out why and fix that.’”