Finishing the bridge to diversity

Abstract

While much progress has been made to diversify the medical workforce in regard to gender, there is a long way to go with regard to race and ethnicity. The author emphasizes that seeking diversity in the medical professions is imperative to achieve just and equitable access to rewarding careers, improved access to health care for the under-served, culturally competent care (which includes the issue of patients' satisfaction with their care), comprehensive research agenda targeted to the problems of all areas of the population, and use of the rich and diverse pool of the nation's talent to better manage the health care system. In the 1960s the civil rights movement and civil unrest woke up the nation's institutions to the need for affirmative action initiatives, and academic medicine was one of the first to respond: there was a dramatic rise in the percentage of underrepresented minority medical school matriculants. But in the mid-1970s, this trend stalled. To state it again, the AAMC in 1991 created Project 3000 by 2000 as a longterm strategy to effect small scale educational reform in the K-12 schools and colleges that are responsible for the academic preparation of potential underrespresented-minority (URM) applicants. For a few years, the attention to URMs created by this program, and other factors, spurred a significant increase in the percentage of URM matriculants and proved the power of affirmative action. But the increase has not continued. The author maintains that this may be largely because affirmative action is being pursued with less vigor and in some cases has been stopped by law. He concludes with a vigorous defense of affirmative action and maintains that it must be used alongside more long-term solutions such as project 3000 by 2000 to achieve true diversity in the medical professions.

Improving health care quality through culturally competent physicians: leadership and organizational diversity training

“…50,51 However, a growing recognition of this problem has begun to resonate with medical educators, and calls for teaching leadership skills as a part of medical training has garnered growing support among physicians. [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] As a result of this change in thinking, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education added the leadership skills of 'interpersonal skills and communication' and 'professionalism' to their list of core competencies. 54 Although these two elements together do not constitute a full description of the qualities …”

“…Cohen, in his discourse on 'Finishing the bridge for diversity', called for his medical colleagues to take action for using leadership techniques to address the issues of diversity in medicine. 55 In doing so, he strongly advocated that highquality health care and discovering medical solutions cannot be fully realized without strong leadership to augment efforts to increase cultural competence. The section below discusses the implications of developing physician leadership using transformational leadership for managing diverse work teams in delivering effective cross-cultural patient care.…”

The Value of Diversity in Academic Emergency Medicine

“…In the 15-year period between 1980 and 1995, there was a 160% population increase in the Asian subgroup, 83% in the Hispanic subgroup, 57% Native American, 24% African American, and 12% white. 3 Considering Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and African American, it is projected that those groups will comprise about 35% of the population by the year 2010 and about 50% of the population by the year 2050. 3 The underrepresented minority population has a twofold disparity in the number of URM medical school matriculants.…”

“…3 Considering Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and African American, it is projected that those groups will comprise about 35% of the population by the year 2010 and about 50% of the population by the year 2050. 3 The underrepresented minority population has a twofold disparity in the number of URM medical school matriculants. For instance, in the year 1990 the URM population was 19.4% and the number of minority matriculants was 9.8% of medical school.…”

Is Diversity Good? Six Possible Conceptions of Diversity and Six Possible Answers

“…Hume [1;part XII,p. 85) Introduction Diversity is at the core of widely discussed ethical and policy issues such as affirmative action in higher education [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11], female enrollment in science and engineering departments [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21], personality types amongst engineers [22,23], workplace diversity [6,7,24,25], biodiversity [26,27], and even architecture [27]. To Sullivan [12], ''the goal of engineering education should be the full participation of women, people of color, low-income students, and first-generation, collegebound young adults;'' while this may be a goal, calling it ''the goal of engineering education'' makes no sense.…”