Minorities on the Interview Trail

DSCCB,

I don't care to look up the articles because I think saying "these tests are culturally biased" is an excuse and a crutch for poor performance. "Oh, the proctor was looking at me funny" or "McDonald's didn't have my normal breakfast sandwich" could be equally valid excuses, but ultimately the PD won't care why your test score was low.

I'm also not sure how testing scientific principles can be "biased." Either you know it or you don't. The principles of biomechanics aren't influenced by race as far as I know.

You're also going to be taking tests for the rest of your life. OITE's, Boards, recerts...it's weak sauce to use the "culturally biased" card. At a certain point in your life you need to take responsibility for your failures and shortcomings instead of blaming them on someone else.

Finally, I take certain umbrage with your last statement. If you're going to present arguments based on latent racism (the "good ole boy" or "country clubs" you mention) I think it's pretty racist and presumptuous for you to think that "many ortho applicants have family members and family friends that are placing calls on their behalf." So, just because you're white you'll get a spot because, clearly, your dad is a doctor and is golfing buddies with the program director/chairman? I don't think that making sweeping generalizations or assumptions about someone's background based on skin color is very smart or conducive to intelligent discourse.

LOL... no shortcomings or failures here buddy. I'd jump to say anyone with a membership on this site in general is pretty successful. But continue life assuming that nothing is biased. If you read my initial entry I said its not racism, its LIFE.

You obviously don't get the concept of a test being biased, has nothing to do with a proctor or breakfast sandwich. We all know most standardized test past the MCAT including med school exams are heavily influenced by the ability to quickly get through the test. Here is an example of bias, this is a question that was on the MCAT that was released that was used to help with MCAT prep sessions.

The question essentially asked if a baseball pitching machine was set at anlge "A", on the power setting of 5, the ball travelled x distance. If the angle of the machin is increased to angle "B", the ball travelled a lesser distance y. Did the machine do more or less Work on the ball.

Test taker A... very smart nonminority knows the work equation does quickly does the math getting and answer that says the machine did less work.

Test taker B...also smart grew up with his own personal pitching machine, at some point knew the equation but in general hates memorizing, so no longer knows it, but knows it doesn't matter what angle you shoot the ball the machine is on the same setting doing the same amount of work. The correct answer.

Here you have a very smart person with know firsthand use of the topic involved spending 20-30 seconds to get a question wrong because he forgot to account for the height the ball travelled with the increased angle, but knew more physics necessary to answer the question.
Another guy grew up in a socio-economic place where he could have the machine. Then a guy who may have bought his kid the same machine writes a test question. Never occured to the test writer it was biased, may have never occured to the screeners that it was biased. But when I got the question right and the other guy that I admit knew more physics spent more time to get it wrong. There's a bias involved.

Point is you have to take the test, things aren't set up to a miniorities advantage. THATS LIFE

I still don't see how your example is culturally biased. The one kid who didn't get the right answer didn't get it because he did the calculations wrong. That's too bad. I don't understand how being white, black, blue, or green affects that outcome. Either you know it or you don't.

You're right, life isn't fair. Some kids were given every advantage in life and still wind up being lazy sh*tbags. Some kids weren't and through hard work became very successful. Their are a million variations in between. My beef is with people who use excuses and blame institutionalized racism for their shortcomings. You've clearly made it to where you are in life through your hard work. I guess it just irks me that there are people who have bought into this idea of a shadowy cabal of old white men trying to keep bruthas down, and this is why they can't get ahead. I think there's enough scholarships and avenues for anyone to make it in this country, if they're willing to put in the work.

The most amusing thing to me are his calculations in how many minorities would get interviews. Why is there the assumption that there are no minority rotators? Why is there the assumption that a program won't interview minorities from their own school?

So the "disadvantaged" one is not smart enough to realize the question doesn't require knowledge of pitching machines. It's a simple ballistics problem. It could be a pitching machine, cannonball, AK-47 round, or any other projectile and it's still the same problem. It's science.

How insensitive...we don't even know what color the pitching machine was?

the simple reply about bias would be this...

For example, you have an affuent person and a very poor person (race doen't matter). Sure, the affluent person knows about the pitching machine because he had one growing up. But say the poor person grew up in the projects and there were gun fights every night and he had buddies in the ED all the time with gun shot wounds. He might not know anything about trauma for his test, but he remembers all his friends had treatment X when they went to the ED so he picks it and gets it right.

Everyone has different life experiences which makes certain aspects of standardized tests easy for them. Haven't you seen Slumdog Millionaire? That's basically the premise of the movie.. You don't have to be brilliant if they ask the right questions...

Therecanonlybeone... I agree that is what I was trying to convey.

And I didn't forget the home program minority rotators... A good amount of programs aren't academic so in order to included every program I didn't include, home school applicants. I was simply speaking of the difficulty to get an interview... at best if you count your home school and rotations you're talking about 5 interviews. With a "magic Number" between 10-14, you're only half way there. Its the other 5-9 interviews that are difficult.

Of note how many home program minorities did A. your med school have, and how many that were pursuing ortho on top of that? B. how many minority rotators did you have on your rotations on average? C. When you looked around the room interview day how many minorities did you see?

Those aren't questions I'm trying to start an argument over, just curious to what your numbers experience was.

I had a school with far more minorities than the average med school, but still less than 8%, and there were only a couple pursuing ortho. I did away rotations and I was the minority didn't see a second. I know for fact that at the 3 programs i either rotated at including one home school, one private hospital, and one other academic program. The sum total of minority applicants at my school and the other academic program was 6 (2 and 4) and I was one of those 6. Sum total of minority rotators (excluding home applicants) my school, academic, and private was 2 and I was one of those 2 (0,2,0). So yes I excluded those groups because of the 150-200 interviews given at those 3 places there were only 8 interviews granted to minorities that either went to school there or rotated, and 3 of those interviews were my own.

It really pains me to see people looking purely at statistics and concluding that there's some sort of racial bias going on. By that logic, the NBA must be run by a bunch of hardcore black supremacists, right? The fact is there are a multitude of factors that result in these numbers, and you can't blame racism for everything. I mean for God's sakes we have medical schools like Howard that pretty much accept ONLY black applicants. I've spoken with some of the faculty on the admissions comitee at my med school and they've flat out told me that they will accept a minority applicant over a white applicant with better credentials all for the sake of increasing diversity.

So what does all this have to do with the topic at hand? Well, if a significant percentage of the minority medical students in this country were accepted based on factors other than academic achievement, doesn't it make sense that these same groups would be under-represented in a highly competitive specialty like orthopedics? It's just common sense. I'm not saying I'm for or against increasing the diversity of our medical schools, but I will tell you that I am 100% against using diversity as a crutch to land an ortho residency spot when there's such a shortage of PCP's to treat minority populations. I mean you have to draw the line somewhere.

Wow. Such an interesting topic.

I don't normally post, but being both black and female, the "miniority" issue is close to my heart. On my interview trail, the only place I came across black females was at Howard. Nonetheless, the lack of diverisity or minorities in Orthopedics is a systemic issue that clearly does not have one easily identifiable cause. But bias, does definately exist.

Ortho as a whole fails to attract miniorities from the outset because of its perception (and reality) of being white male dominated. As such, I think there are many attendings and faculty who fail to make themselves available to prospective minority students and vice versa because of a lack of preceived commonalities.

(2 examples: On my interview trail, one interviewer (a white male) told me he did not know how to interview a girl. (seriously, his words; he stopped short of saying a black person); second: Beer is not really my thing, nor are strip clubs, hooters and all other such places that the boys, and the reps and the faculty hang out after work to bond. I am not excluded outright, but you get the point).

I think most people who become interested in Orthopedics do so from not only having a personal interest in the field, but from also having that interest re-affirmed and nurtured. The fact that people inherently grativate to what they perceive as similar is not a shocking revelation. And in matching during residency, we always talk of the program and the resident having a "fit." So you take two students, of equal academic caliber; one white and one black (or hispanic, or indian, or female); and a white male program director; academics aside, he is going to pick the person who he feels will fit best in his already all white, all male residency. No surprise here - - its likely not going to be me the black female. Its not outright racism, but there is a bias; and to say there isn't is foolish and naive.

Diversity is not a bad thing: and it involves more than just race and gender. We owe our field the dedication to attract the best and the brightest; which I would dare to say is not simply in the form of white males. But because there are so many white males in Orthopedics, it is going to be up to them to value diversity enough to ensure that their personal practices are being inclusive of all who might be interested.

Just my two cents.

Really? WOW.

Yes, I spent my five years of residency hanging out drinking beer at strip clubs, only after warming up at HOOTERS with all the equipment reps. We even held journal club there each month! Your example, while cute, is exactly what you preach against. To suggest that somehow your chances for obtaining a residency spot were marred by your failure to drink beer, go to stip clubs, and hang out at HOOTERS borders on the ridiculous. You are taking perhaps one unfortunate experience, and GENERALIZING all orthopods as white male, knuckle dragging, sexist alcoholics. Just as minorities are rightfully insulted when assumptions are made about them based purely on the color of their skin, your generalization that we all go seedy establishments and drink beer with our reps to BOND is equally insulting and of little help to this otherwise difficult subject. Of course, I'm sure you will fail to see how it is.

I agree with the above. While I do enjoy the occasional beer, I drink less than a case a year and I have never been invited to hooters by a device rep. All residents and attendings want is someone they feel comfortable talking to and joking with (on top of the obvious academic merits and work ethic required). This does not mean that you have to be exactly like everyone else, it just means that you need to be open minded enough to relate to others regardless of your differences. Segregating yourself by focusing on your differences like the post a couple above this one, is not going to make you seem like a good fit. You need to focus on the similarities and embrace the differences as a good thing

Wow! I came on this site to receive insight with a colorblind attitude. And, for the most part, I have learned alot already! I'm just surprised to see some of the inferences made in this thread. I guess one cannot expect much.

As, the lone wolf (aka black male) in my MSII class I put alot of extra pressure on myself to do well b/c I am fearful (even though the numbers in my academic record suggest I should not be) people will assume the worst about my abilities. And while that should be the last thing on my mind it clearly is not b/c I am the only one in my class, feel like I have NO ONE to turn to, and I feel like I am representing every other black male while being watched under the microscope. Ok...so enough with the boo hoooo...that crap won't get me the glorified carpentry residency program I want
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Here's to hoping this conversation stays professional!f

I figure this is as appropriate of a thread as any to post this... here is some information for an Orthopaedic Summer Internship Program designed specifically for first year female and minority medical students:



Looks like a pretty cool program, overall. Best of luck to those who can take advantage of it.

Make the choice that defines your future.
Apply for the Orthopaedic Summer Internship program,
sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopaedic
Surgeons and Nth Dimensions Educational Solutions.

Specifically designed for first year female and minority
medical students enrolled in the AAOS, JRGOS, or RJOS
mentoring programs, the Orthopaedic Summer Internship
program offers a unique opportunity to gain valuable
first-hand clinical and research experience at a critical
time in your medical school career.

Medical students selected for this program spend the
summer working with experienced orthopaedic surgeons
in an academic environment that fosters excellence.
Students prepare poster presentations for a national
medical meeting and attend portions of the AAOS
Annual Meeting the following spring.

Yes, this is a great program. I have applied for it, and I'm hoping to spend the summer with Mary O'Connor down in Jacksonville.

Interviewees for this year's program have already been chosen, but I'd definitely encourage other women and/or minorities to look into it for next year! It seems like a wonderful mentoring opportunity.

my program (well my former program.....i finished up yesterday) has two females in the program currently (one is african american). there is a new african american male intern as well as one male resident whose ancestors are from pakistan. lots of pasty white dudes as well.....as am i.

good luck all.....

last year at Mt Sinai, with three residents per year there were at least three females. Three of the residents were african american as well