Highlights
- •Improvement in diversity is not reflected in departmental leadership.
- •More women serve as associate program directors than other leadership positions.
- •Only 4 specialties had >10% representation from women as division-chiefs.
- •Only trauma/ACS had >10% representation from minorities.
- •Highlights lack of diversity and need for increased representation in leadership.
Abstract
Background
Diversity in surgery has been shown to improve mentorship and patient care. Diversity
has improved among general surgery (GS) trainees but is not the case for departmental
leadership. We analyzed the race and gender distributions across leadership positions
at academic GS programs.
Methods
Academic GS programs (n = 118) listed by the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive
Database Access system were included. Leadership positions were ascertained from department
websites. Gender and race were determined through publicly provided data.
Results
Ninety-two (79.3%) department chairs were white and 99 (85.3%) were men. Additionally,
88 (74.6%) program directors and 34 (77.3%) vice-chairs of education were men. A higher
proportion of associate program directors were women (38.5%). Of 787 division-chiefs,
73.4% were white. Only trauma had >10% representation from minority surgeons. Women
represented >10% of division chiefs in colorectal, thoracic, pediatric, and plastic/burn
surgery.
Conclusion
Diversity among GS trainees is not yet reflected in departmental leadership. Effort
is needed to improve disparities in representation across leadership roles.
Graphical abstract
Graphical Abstract
Keywords
Abbreviations:
ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education), APDS (Association of Program Directors in Surgery), AMA (American Medical Association), FREIDA (Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 24, 2020
Accepted:
November 21,
2020
Received in revised form:
November 21,
2020
Received:
April 2,
2020
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
