According to a recent study, radiology has made notable progress in increasing diversity relative to other medical specialties in the past decade.
The team gathered the Graduate Medical Education results from 2010-2011 to 2020-2021 to access demographic information for major medical specialties. This way, the team could extract the racial and ethnicity breakdowns. The changes in racial and ethnic composition of residents in radiology were compared to those in other specialties.
The results revealed that the percentage of Black residents increased from 3.07% in 2010-2011 to 3.83% in 2020-2021, and increased from 4.83% to 7.35% for Hispanic residents. Experts detailed that as of the 2020-2021-year, radiology ranked 10th among specialties for Black and 9th for Hispanic representation.
Whilst the numbers are still seen as low, researchers believe the statistics represent progress in medicine.
Several factors have been suggested to account for the limited diversity in radiology. These factors pertain to exposure to the specialty, selection criteria, outreach and mentorship opportunities.
Lead author Xiao Wu, MD, said, “Unconscious (implicit) bias and amplification cascade may also play a role to undermine best efforts to increase diversity in radiology”.
As Xio Wu emphasised, the field has encouraged the development and implementation of strategies that promote diversity as an institutional policy, including bias training and increased opportunities and resources for professional development.
Source: Academic Radiology
Image Credit: iStock
References:
Wu X et al. (2023) Diversity in Radiology Residents Relative to Other Specialties— Trends Over the Past Decade. Academic Radiology.
