AUA 2019: Financial Costs of Urology Residency Interviews: Are Underrepresented Minorities at a Disadvantage?
For this study, 22 theoretical applicants were created at 17 randomly chosen medical schools with different study bodies of greater or lower underrepresented students for the match year of 2017-18. When financial and temporal costs of interviews at leading residency institutions were compared for each student, the research team found that there was no significant difference between either of the cohorts. The median total cost of travel, food, and hotels for applicants from high URM schools was approximately $9,189, whereas the cost for applicants of low URM was roughly $9,035. Further, travel time was also not statistically different amongst the two groups.
Contrary to our belief, the financial costs of these interviews for residency training programs do not act as a barrier for these residency applicants. Our next step to analyze is to ask an important question to these institutions as to what might account for our lack of diversity in some of our medical institutions. As Mr. Whitley discussed, we hope that people look for other reasons as to the lack of diversity within these urology residencies among our nation as this remains a systemic issue, not financial.
There isn’t one overlying cause for our poor diversity within some of our institutions. According to this research team, this must be a political issue as there is something along the medical pipeline which we aren’t aware of that is affecting the process. In opposition, there may be those who argue that although it isn’t fair that some applicants are unable to attend all interviews to all residency programs, there is little to help those who do not apply, especially to those who just don’t choose to apply to a location farther from a car ride. After a small but controversial debate, the overall middle ground seems to be an agreement that this is a systemic issue, and one solution will not actively resolve our struggle to maintain diversity internationally.
Presented by: Jorge Whitley, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Co-authors: Jorge Whitley, Byron Joyner, Kathleen Kieran*
Affiliation: University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Written by: Sherry Lu, (Department of Urology, University of California-Irvine) at the American Urological Association's 2019 Annual Meeting (AUA 2019), May 3 – 6, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois