Research Article
Connor Hughes test Affliation
Rebekah Lantz
Makenzie Dye
Trang Nguyen
Azl Saeed
Sarah Yu
Dylan Hefner
Jerome Bey
Tets Name
Recieved on: 2023-04-23, Accepted on: 2023-05-23, Published on: 2023-05-31
Introduction
Diversity is an essential aspect of healthcare that falls short of its reported goals and advocacy toward change. A diverse workforce is more equipped to understand the needs of patients from varying backgrounds. We wished to observe current data on general cardiology to understand how females, DOs and Non-US graduates compared to their male, MD, and US-graduated peers.
Methods
We obtained data about accredited cardiology fellowship programs from FRIEDA™, the American Medical Association’s residency and fellowship database for the 2022-2023 academic year. For each field male vs female, DO vs MD, US vs Non-US graduate, we ran a binomial test of proportions to determine statistical significance which was defined as deviated from 50% (p<0.05). We used SAS Studio 3.8, version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Inc, Cary, NC) for statistical analysis. Confidence intervals utilized Wilson score interval.
Results
General cardiology fellowships showed disparity for all fields with female gender frequency 749 (27.3%) (p<0.0001) (CI 26, 29), DO frequency 276 (10.1%) (p<0.0001) (CI 9,11), and non-US graduate frequency 888 (32.5%) (p<0.0001) (CI 31,34).
Conclusion
There remains a lack of representation for females, DOs and Non-US graduates in general cardiology. We suspect that systemic barriers prevent underrepresented groups from access and opportunities in career and leadership at all stages of training and practice. Increasing diversity in cardiology can promote cultural competence and empathy, improve communication, and allow inclusive patient care. We propose steps for attracting diverse individuals to medicine and maintain them within medicine and to competitive careers from early stages of education.