Hello! Happy Sunday!
This week, I’m introducing another component to my blog. Every four weeks, I am planning on posting an article talking about healthcare and the different aspects of diversity in medicine.
These pieces are not only to make the blog more dynamic but also because this is a topic I’m incredibly interested in and love researching.
I do want to make a disclaimer, though.
I do not intend for these posts to be political. This isn’t to say that talking about diversity in healthcare isn’t a political topic, just that my opinions will not be input into these articles, and I don’t intend on making them controversial. They will be research-based and educational. If you ever feel the posts are controversial/don’t like the topic, you’re always free to leave a comment or reach out and we can discuss it! This is a sensitive topic for some people, and there may be times where I word something the wrong way. I’m always open to criticism and feedback--that’s how we learn and do better!
So, what’s this week’s topic?
I guess it’s less of a topic and more of a question: How diverse is medicine, really?
The answer? Not very.
Throughout the years, we have begun to see a surge of different types of people becoming physicians. You can see this surge, particularly in the female demographics. For example, from 2000 to 2018, the population of women in healthcare increased by 13% (from 22.8% to 35.8%, according to AMN Healthcare and to the AAMC). This, as an aspiring female physician, is encouraging to see. That being said, only 35.8% of the healthcare field is composed of women. Now, there’s a variety of reasons for that 35.8%, all of which I hope to cover in a later post.
However, white women actually fare pretty well demographically compared to women of other races and ethnicities. Once you start adding more parameters, the numbers become exponentially tinier.
Compared to the white demographic of physicians at [1]56.2% in the industry, other races and ethnicities make up 43.8%. This doesn’t sound too bad until you start breaking down that 43.8%.
Here are the 2018 statistics the AAMC provided:
Asian - 17.1%
Unknown - 13.7%
Hispanic - 5.8%
Black or African American - 5.0%
Multiple Race, Non-Hispanic - 1.0%
Other - 0.8%
American Indian or Alaska Native - 0.3%
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander - 0.1%
*You can reference site [1] below if you’d like to read more about this.
Some of those numbers are crazy, right? The data that particularly stands out to me is the 0.1% of physicians that are Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.
If you can’t fully conceptualize how small 0.1% is, here’s a great way to think about it:
0.1% is equivalent to 1/1000 physicians. This would be like somebody saying to a group of 1,000 people that only one of them is going to get an apple. Obviously the apple situation is not the same as medical school and becoming a physician, but it’s a fun way to think about that 0.1%.
Now, there are a lot of reasons why some of those numbers are so minuscule, and the primary reason is not always a sociopolitical issue. These numbers could be tiny due to a difference in population size. These numbers could be small because some people's cultures don’t believe in or practice routine medical care. The list goes on.
That’s all from me for today. I know statistics are not fun to read about. They tend to get boring quite fast. However, to better understand why people (like myself) advocate so strongly for a more diverse healthcare field, we have to understand the data behind it and, more than that, what that data means.
For a lot of these articles, I am hoping to interview a person to talk about an aspect of this topic. Thus, these articles will not typically be just me researching articles and analyzing them. The purpose of this blog is to listen to people and hear their wisdom and I plan on sticking with that!
Best,
E.F.
If you would like to read more about these statistics, I have attached the links below.
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