Diversity in Medicine

Podcast Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Cleveland Clinic Cardiac Consult brought to you by the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic.

Quinn Capers, MD:

Hi.

Miriam Jacob, MD:

A couple years ago, ERAS took away our ability to see the picture of our applicants, which I think was helpful because I think it takes away some implicit bias. Do we have data to say that that changed how we interviewed or how we recruited our fellows?

Quinn Capers, MD:

I don't think we have that data yet. So I think that study is an important one. It needs to be done. To my knowledge, it's not been done yet. Yeah.

Milind Desai, MD, MBA:

Quinn, thank you for coming in. Excellent presentation. One comment or question I had is, there is a countywide or zip code wide neighborhood, median household income data available for USA for most counties. How does that interface with the racial data, some of which you talked about?

Quinn Capers, MD:

Oh, there's a very strong overlap because of the history of this country. With wealth and poverty and race, a very strong overlap. It turns out in medical school admissions for years, now it's self-reported data, but they've been asking medical school applicants to identify if they live in a medically underserved area by a zip code, so that medical schools, if they choose to, can use that to say, this person comes from an underserved, disadvantaged area. The data shows they're more likely to go back to. And if we as a medical school think that's an honorable thing, then we're going to take that into consideration. I've not been aware of residency and fellowship programs using that data, but I think that will be an intriguing pilot to study.

Lee Kirksey, MD:

Do you think that's a surrogate for race, ethnicity lived experience?

Quinn Capers, MD:

I think it is a partial surrogate, but not complete.

Lee Kirksey, MD:

Dr. Carter?

James Carter, MD:

Dr. Capers, glad to finally meet you in person. We've shared meetings together virtually.

Quinn Capers, MD:

Yes, yes. Good morning,

James Carter, MD:

James Carter. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. I'm wondering what you would suggest as next steps for what I see as a problem, which is safety and belonging in particular cultures. Once we have applicants that get in, they find it very difficult to navigate being labeled as disruptive because of their different mindsets and different approaches to clinical care and patient care and research. Do you have any first few steps that we can consider to try to change that experience?

Quinn Capers, MD:

Yep. Well, thank you, Dr. Carter. Thank you for your question and thank you for being here. I think one really important step is to support your allies. So if you bring in people who are significantly underrepresented in your institution, if you were to rely on finding others that are like them in your institution, you may not have much to offer them, but there are allies everywhere. And if your allies feel like they're supported, they can come to the rescue and work with you and work with mentoring, mentoring teams. And I think that can be very important. I will often tell members of underrepresented minority groups, your mentor doesn't have to be from your group. Your mentor doesn't have to be from your hometown. Your mentor doesn't have to be from your university.

And often I can tell you, I'm asked by members of majority groups when I present data similar to what I presented today, "Can a white person be a mentor or be a sponsor for somebody from an underrepresented group?" Absolutely. I know when I was a little boy wanting to be a doctor, if somebody would've sat down and told me, "You know what? You're going to make it. You're going to be a good doctor." It would not have mattered to me, race, gender, gender identity, none of that would've mattered. And I still think that's true. So you have to do some things that make those who are allies, who are all around us, make them feel supported, make them feel like it will be a good thing for them to reach out and support those from underrepresented groups.

Announcer:

Thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. We welcome your comments and feedback. Please contact us at heart@ccf.org. Like what you heard? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, or listen at clevelandclinic.org/cardiacconsultpodcast.