The Impact of Gendered Language in Residency Program Descriptions on Medical Students' Perceptions

Authors

Reagan E. Treadwell Smucker, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School at Old Dominion UniversityFollow
Catherine G. Nguyen, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School at Old Dominion UniversityFollow
Catherine E. Read, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School at Old Dominion University
Jovanna A. Tracz, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School at Old Dominion University
Laurie L. Wellman, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences Eastern Virginia Medical School at Old Dominion UniversityFollow

ORCID

0000-0001-7629-3901 (Treadwell Smucker), 0000-0002-7233-8962 (Tracz), 0000-0001-9195-2063 (Wellman)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.1007/s44217-024-00324-2

Publication Title

Discover Education

Volume

3

Issue

1

Pages

239 (1-6)

Abstract

Background

Medical students may be influenced by perceived program culture and personal fit when applying to residency.

Activity

Medical students were given three iterations of a generic residency program description presented with gender-neutral, feminine, or masculine skewed language and were subsequently asked to assess their perception of gender diversity and fit within each program.

Results

Gendered language in program descriptions had a direct effect on all participants' sense of gender diversity in programs. The feminine-skewed description was most favorably perceived, regardless of respondent gender.

Conclusion

These findings provide a starting point from which residency programs can consider the impact of gendered language on student recruitment and gender equity.

Rights

© 2024 The Authors.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request."

Original Publication Citation

Treadwell Smucker, R. E., Nguyen, C. G., Read, C. E., Tracz, J. A., & Wellman, L. L. (2024). The impact of gendered language in residency program descriptions on medical students' perceptions. Discover Education, 3(1), 1-6, Article 239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-024-00324-2

Repository Citation

Treadwell Smucker, R. E., Nguyen, C. G., Read, C. E., Tracz, J. A., & Wellman, L. L. (2024). The impact of gendered language in residency program descriptions on medical students' perceptions. Discover Education, 3(1), 1-6, Article 239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-024-00324-2