Studies Highlight Gender, Racial Inequalities in Medical Profession

Compared with white medical students, black students had 84% lower odds of being Alpha Omega Alpha members, the researchers found. Asian students had 48% lower odds, compared with white students.

“I think all these studies are showing that implicit bias exists in medical education, but people aren’t looking at measures to track it,” Boatright says.

Implicit bias consists of attitudes or stereotypes that affect people’s “understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner,” according to The Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Columbus.

In an editorial accompanying the new research, Dr. Molly Cooke of the University of California, San Francisco, recounts the story, from 2016, of a female African-American physician whose assistance was rejected when one of her fellow airplane passengers became ill. The flight crew didn’t believe her when she said she was a doctor.⁴

“What happened to Tamika Cross on Delta flight DL945 in October was terrible,” writes Cooke. “However, it is not exclusively the fault of the nonmedical world.”

“We must insist that our profession and the processes that our trainees encounter along the way treat them fairly and reflect the diversity of the patients we serve,” she says.

References

1. Boiko JR, Anderson AJ, Gordon RA. Representation of women among academic grand rounds speakers. JAMA Intern Med. 2017 Mar 6. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.9646. [Epub ahead of print]
2. Dayal A, O’Connor DM, Qadri U, et al. Comparison of male vs. female resident milestone evaluations by faculty during emergency medicine residency training. JAMA Intern Med. 2017 Mar 6. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.9616. [Epub ahead of print]
3. Boatright D, Ross D, O’Connor P, et al. Racial disparities in medical student membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. JAMA Intern Med. 2017 Mar 6. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.9623. [Epub ahead of print]
4. Cooke M. Implicit bias in academic medicine: #WhatADoctorLooksLike. JAMA Intern Med. 2017 Mar 6. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.9643. [Epub ahead of print]