Abstract
BACKGROUND: The lack of diversity in the cardiovascular physician workforce is thought to be an important driver of racial and sex disparities in cardiac care. Cardiology fellowship program directors play a critical role in shaping the cardiology workforce. METHODS AND RESULTS: To assess program directors’ perceptions about diversity and barriers to enhancing diversity, the authors conducted a survey of 513 fellowship program directors or associate directors from 193 unique adult cardiology fellowship training programs. The response rate was 21% of all individuals (110/513) representing 57% of US general adult cardiology training programs (110/193). While 69% of respondents endorsed the belief that diversity is a driver of excellence in health care, only 26% could quote 1 to 2 references to support this statement. Sixty-three percent of respondents agreed that “our program is diverse already so diversity does not need to be increased.” Only 6% of respondents listed diversity as a top 3 priority when creating the cardiovascular fellowship rank list. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that while program directors generally believe that diversity enhances quality, they are less familiar with the literature that supports that contention and they may not share a unified definition of "diversity." This may result in diversity enhancement having a low priority. The authors propose several strategies to engage fellowship training program directors in efforts to diversify cardiology fellowship training programs.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | e017196 |
Journal | Journal of the American Heart Association |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 17 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2020 |
Keywords
- ANSWER CHOICES
- Disparities
- Diversity in cardiology
- Implicit bias
- Training program directors
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine