Update on workforce diversity in vascular surgery

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Surgical Workforce Diversity
• Health Equity

Background:

• A diverse surgical workforce is crucial for meeting patient needs and driving innovation.
• Orthopedic surgery (OS) implemented a diversity initiative over a decade ago, providing a benchmark for comparison.
• Trends in diversity within vascular surgery (VS) and general surgery (GS) require assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess workforce diversity trends in vascular surgery (VS) and general surgery (GS).
• To compare diversity trends in VS and GS with orthopedic surgery (OS).
• To evaluate the representation of female, Hispanic, and black trainees in surgical specialties relative to medical school demographics.

Main Methods:

• Utilized U.S. Graduate Medical Education reports (1999-2017) for trainee data in VS, GS, and OS.
• Obtained medical student demographic data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
• Normalized trainee representation by medical school demographics and performed statistical trend analysis.

Main Results:

• Significant increases in female and Hispanic trainees were observed across all three surgical disciplines (P < .001).
• The proportion of black trainees did not significantly change in any discipline.
• Hispanic trainees were well-represented relative to medical school demographics (NR 0.95-1.53), while women and black trainees remained underrepresented (NR < 1).

Conclusions:

• While female and Hispanic trainee numbers have increased, only Hispanic trainees enter at a rate exceeding their medical school representation.
• The stagnation of black trainee representation is concerning.
• Underrepresentation of women and black trainees suggests pipeline recruitment issues that require targeted interventions.