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

Patient-physician language concordance improves health outcomes for the growing US population with non-English language preferences. Some graduate medical education specialties offer educational opportunities for their residents to improve skills in a non-English language relevant to their population. However, these efforts are typically program-specific, and the language proficiency of resident physicians by specialty has not been previously evaluated on a national scale. In this study, the authors sought to examine the language skills of first-year resident physicians across Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) specialties.

This study describes the language skills of first-year resident physicians within 36 specialties from academic years 2013-2014 to 2023-2024. Data were obtained from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)'s Electronic Residency Application Service and the ACGME. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and chi-square testing.

Of 303,539 first-year resident physicians with an AAMC ID from 2013 to 2024, 288,933 (95.2%) had available language data. Most residents (71.6%) reported a non-English language at any level across 36 specialties. Over the study period, reported advanced/native multilingualism increased by 11.6 percentage points, while novice/intermediate language skills declined by a comparable amount. Medical specialties had a higher proportion of advanced/native multilingual residents (34.8%) compared to hospital-based and surgical specialties (27.0% and 26.7%, respectively, P < .001). Spanish was the most prevalent advanced/native language in 34 of the 36 specialties.

First-year resident physician multilingualism is common, with marked variations in languages and proficiency levels across specialties. Graduate medical education programs and specialty societies may consider evaluating their specialists' language skills when considering strategies to improve health care for populations in need. Such language data may be used to inform the development of specialty-specific medical language curricula and individualized resources according to trainee language proficiency and patient population language preferences.