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Author Notes:

Jennifer Reilly Lukela, Email: jlreilly@med.umich.edu

Our thanks to the residents in our program for engaging in this discussion around gender dynamics and completing the survey; to Janet Malley and our fellow Program Directors at the University of Michigan for input on survey design; to Elaine Grech, Brian Minnich and Jim Auge in the Department of Internal Medicine for their assistance collecting faculty, evaluation and conference schedule data; and to the staff at the University of Michigan Consulting for Statistics, Computing and Analytics Research for their assistance with statistical analysis.

J.R. Lukela, A. Ramakrishnan, N. Hadeed and J. Del Valle declare that they have no competing interests.

Subject:

Keywords:

  • Gender disparity
  • Implicit bias
  • Medical education-graduate
  • Role model
  • Academic Medical Centers
  • Adult
  • Cross-Sectional Studies
  • Faculty, Medical
  • Female
  • Gender Identity
  • Humans
  • Internal Medicine
  • Internship and Residency
  • Male
  • Perception
  • Physicians, Women
  • Sexism
  • Students, Medical

When perception is reality: Resident perception of faculty gender parity in a university-based internal medicine residency program

Tools:

Journal Title:

Perspectives on Medical Education

Volume:

Volume 8, Number 6

Publisher:

, Pages 346-352

Type of Work:

Article | Final Publisher PDF

Abstract:

Introduction: Although women have entered medical school and internal medicine residency programs in significant numbers for decades, women faculty remain underrepresented in senior and departmental leadership roles. How residents perceive this gender disparity is unknown. We sought to assess resident perception of gender parity among departmental leadership and teaching faculty in our internal medicine department, and to determine the actual gender distribution of those faculty roles. Methods: An anonymous cross-sectional survey was distributed to evaluate resident perception of gender representation of various faculty roles. Using conference schedules, resident evaluations, and our department website, we determined the actual representation of women faculty in department leadership roles, and in clinical and educational activities. Results: 88 of 164 residents (54%) responded. Women residents were less likely than men to perceive that women faculty were equally represented in department leadership (45% men agreed vs. 13% women, p < 0.05), clinical teaching roles (55% men agreed vs. 28% women, p < 0.05), or facilitating educational conferences (45% men agreed vs. 28% women, p = 0.074). In 2017, the internal medicine department at our institution comprised 815 faculty members, 473 men (58%) and 342 women (42%). At that time, women faculty held 5% of senior departmental leadership positions and 21% of educational leadership positions. During the year preceding survey distribution, women faculty attended on internal medicine inpatient wards for 33% of the total number of weeks, staffed 20% of morning reports, and facilitated 28% of noon conferences. Discussion: Women residents in our internal medicine training program perceived a gender disparity among faculty in leadership and educational positions to a greater extent than male residents. The perception of women trainees was accurate. In addition to disproportionate underrepresentation in leadership positions, women faculty were underrepresented in prominent educational positions, including attending on inpatient services and serving as discussants at educational conferences.

Copyright information:

© The Author(s) 2019

This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/rdf).
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