Gender Representation Matters: Intervention to Solicit Medical Resident Input to Enable Equity in Leadership in Graduate Medical Education

Abstract

Problem Gender equity in leadership across academic medicine remains a concern. The case of chief resident (CR) offers an opportunity to explore novel strategies in leadership selection in graduate medical education (GME). Means of identifying potential candidates for CR often rely on faculty assessment of resident performance, yet implicit gender bias has the potential to influence this assessment. Approach To diversify the metrics used in CR selection, an intervention was implemented to solicit resident input to identify candidates for CR at 2 U.S. internal medicine residency programs in 2018 and 2019. This involved a simple, cross-sectional survey of residents in which they were asked to identify individual residents as good candidates for consideration for CR. Outcomes There were 298 of 518 internal medicine resident responses to this intervention across sites and years (mean 58.2% response rate). Nomination patterns of residents and program leaders correlated significantly (correlation coefficient 0.62, P