How teaching surgeons communicate: An analysis of intraoperative discourse among male and female surgeons.

Background: Our objective was to compare the use of agentic ("I") and communal ("we") spoken intraoperative discourse between male and female attending and resident surgeons.

Methods: We analyzed transcripts involving attending and resident surgeons from 5 specialties at a single Midwestern academic teaching hospital. We adapted and expanded Grebelsky-Lichtman's codes, assessed rater agreement, and systematically coded transcripts for agentic and communal terms.