DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION Increasing Diversity Through Improved Recruitment From Medical Schools at Historically Black Colleges and Universities By Linelle F. Campbell, MD, MS
"The early identification of students who are interested in emergency medicine is key to creating milestones for these students as they progress through SAEM PULSE | MAY-JUNE 2018
medical school so
20
they know what important tasks they must accomplish each year."
It is that time of year again when emergency medicine bound 4th year medical students find out where they will be spending the next 3-4 years of their lives. As an emergency medicine PGY1, I cannot help but reminisce about the good old days of medical school. One of the most transformative periods for me during medical school was after I decided on emergency medicine as a specialty. There were a few obstacles that needed to be overcome during my application process, chief among them—my medical school did not have a residency program and our emergency department staff was going through a transition so many of the attendings who were historically used to having students shadow them were no longer available. We had a very strong student affairs office, but for those of us applying to emergency medicine it was lacking the specialty-specific information we needed, including how to assess our competitiveness, how to create a timeline for meeting application deadlines, and knowing what to look for in programs based on our personal and professional goals. The six of us who applied to emergency medicine put our heads together and reached out to previous graduates who had matched. We made connections with program directors, did endless Google searches, and most importantly, we pooled our resources together to help each other. Our effort paid off as we secured away rotations, received interview invitations, and (most of us) matched at one of our top ranked programs. This experience is forever embedded in me and has become a passion of mine. It is important to mentor and recruit underrepresented minority (URM) students from medical schools that do not have emergency medicine training programs— especially those students who are from medical schools of historically black
colleges and universities (HBCUs). Doing this will ensure a more diverse applicant pool, and therefore more diverse residency programs and, subsequently, more diverse emergency medicine faculty and leaders. The five stakeholders in this process are the medical schools, residency programs, emergency medicine organizations, students, and most importantly, the patients. Below I highlight some ways that each of these stakeholders can play a part in increasing the success of URM applicants, especially those from HBCUs or who are coming from schools without emergency residency programs.
Medical Schools
The early identification of students who are interested in emergency medicine is key to creating milestones for these students as they progress through medical school so they know what important tasks they must accomplish each year. This includes milestones for shadowing opportunities, research and scholarship, networking, and identifying mentors. Scheduling to allow students time outside of the classroom to build their application and experiences may be a difficult barrier to overcome; however these experiences are pivotal, and can help secure away rotations and interviews. Many URM students who have matched have said they were aided in doing so by their ability to gain access to important networking events and mentors. These include a number of conferences that are available throughout the year. Finding ways to help finance student travel to these conferences and allowing students the time to attend them will have an immense return on investment for their success.
Professional Organizations
If you are reading this, you are probably aware of the many emergency medicine professional organizations; unfortunately, many URM students are not. They simply have not been exposed to these resources.