While female emergency medicine residents score slightly higher than males across a majority of evaluations during the first year of residency, by residency's end, their male counterparts score higher across all evaluations, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
To assess the possible role of implicit gender bias in medical training programs, researchers examined 33,456 competency evaluations of 359 emergency medicine residents conducted by 285 faculty members working at eight community and academic emergency medicine training programs across the country.
Researchers found females outperformed their male counterparts during the first year of residency in 15 of 23 performance areas assessed — scores were notably higher in accountability, multitasking and diagnosis. However, by the end of the third year and final year of residency, males on average received higher scores in all 23 categories of evaluation. Additionally, male residents had a 13 percent higher rate of milestone achievement by graduation, which amounts to approximately three to four months of additional training.
"We are concerned that the disparity we discovered in evaluations may point to an implicit bias ... rather than a deficit in specific skills or knowledge," said Daniel O'Connor, study co-author and a student in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
The study's authors concluded further studies are needed to better understand the potential role of gender bias in medical training.
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