Sexual minorities (SM) may be underrepresented among graduating medical students in radiology and other specialties, according to new research published Thursday in JAMA Network Open.
About 9.4% of females age 25-34 in the general population identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender versus 5.3% of males. That’s compared to about 5.1% of female medical students citing radiology as their intended specialty and about 4.9% of males, based on an analysis of graduation questionnaires.
“Sexual minority people…face numerous health disparities, including poor access to knowledgeable clinicians and culturally sensitive care,” Westley Mori, MD, with the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Department of Dermatology, and colleagues wrote Sept. 30. “Workforce diversity is essential to ensure a pipeline of physicians equipped through personal experiences and diverse learning environments to improve care for SM people, but little is known about sexual orientation diversity in medical training.”
For their research letter, Mori et al. conducted a survey study of graduating medical students using 2016-2019 data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. Out of 58,572 students who met the study’s criteria, 6.3% identified as LGBT, including 5.7% of females and 6.9% of males. Among specialties, psychiatry included the highest percentage of sexual minority students at 11.6% while orthopedic surgery was the lowest (1.8%). Broken down by sex, neurological surgery had the highest percentage of female LGBT students (8.9%) and dermatology the lowest (1.9%) versus OB-GYN (18.8%) and orthopedic surgery (1%) for men.
Female sexual minority students were less likely to intend to practice in primary care specialties compared to their heterosexual peers (41.2% vs. 46.8%). Meanwhile, LGBT men were less likely to pursue surgical specialties than their straight counterparts (17.8% vs. 26.5%). Altogether, the study included 2,600 students listing radiology as their intended specialty (726 women and 1,874 men), with 4.9% identifying as LGBT.
“Further research is needed to better understand factors influencing these disparities,” the study authors concluded. “Sexual orientation data collection should be standardized in all physician workforce surveys and SM diversity considered in undergraduate and graduate medical training recruitment to promote a diverse physician workforce across all specialties.”
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.