Specialty trends in first-year resident physician multilingualism from 2013 to 2024

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Health Services Research
• Linguistics in Medicine

Background:

• Patient-physician language concordance is crucial for health outcomes in diverse US populations.
• Graduate medical education (GME) programs may offer language training, but national data on resident physician language proficiency is lacking.
• Understanding resident language skills is vital for addressing healthcare disparities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the language skills of first-year resident physicians across Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) specialties nationwide.
• To identify trends in resident multilingualism and proficiency levels over a decade.
• To assess variations in language skills by medical specialty.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of language data for first-year resident physicians from 2013-2014 to 2023-2024.
• Utilized data from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Electronic Residency Application Service and ACGME.
• Employed descriptive statistics and chi-square testing for data analysis.

Main Results:

• Over 71% of resident physicians reported proficiency in a non-English language.
• Advanced/native multilingualism increased significantly, while novice/intermediate skills decreased.
• Medical specialties showed a higher proportion of advanced/native multilingual residents compared to hospital-based and surgical specialties (34.8% vs. 27.0% and 26.7%).
• Spanish was the most common advanced/native language across most specialties.

Conclusions:

• First-year resident physician multilingualism is prevalent but varies significantly by specialty and proficiency.
• GME programs and specialty societies should assess physician language skills to enhance care for non-English speaking populations.
• Data on resident language proficiency can inform the development of specialty-specific medical language curricula and resources.