Enhancing Residency Recruitment Processes to Facilitate a Diverse Work Force in Anesthesiology

Building a diverse workforce of physician anesthesiologists should be paramount for hospitals and health care systems. More inclusive preoperative staff would better reflect current demographics nationwide, help address health care disparities, encourage minority patient participation in decision-making, improve patient outcomes and satisfaction, and foster greater innovation in medicine (JAMA Intern Med 2014;174:289-91; Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2020;117:9284-91). Despite these indisputable advantages of physician workforce diversity, the percentage of people identifying as belonging to racial/ethnic minority groups in medicine has continued to remain below that of the general U.S. population (JAMA Netw Open 2019;2:e1910490; N Engl J Med 2019;380:803-5). In anesthesiology, the percentage of under-represented minority (URM) physicians is around 11%. Medical schools are documenting upward trends in Black and brown female graduates (asamonitor.pub/3tLSg8M; JAMA Intern Med 2015;175:1706-8). As per the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), between 1986...