Unraveling the medical residency selection game.

The diversity of modern society is often not represented in the medical workforce. This might be partly due to selection practices. We need to better understand decision-making processes by selection committees in order to improve selection procedures with regard to diversity. This paper reports on a qualitative study with a socio-constructivist perspective conducted in 2015 that explored how residency selection decision-making occurred within four specialties in two regions in the Netherlands. Data included transcripts of the decision-making meetings and of one-on-one interviews with committee members before and after the group decision-making meetings. Candidates struggled to portray themselves favorably as they had to balance playing by the rules and being authentic; between fitting in and standing out. Although admissions committees had a welcoming stance to diversity, their practices were unintentionally preventing them from hiring underrepresented minority (URM) candidates. While negotiating admissions is difficult for all candidates, it is presumably even more complicated for URM candidates. This seems to be having a negative influence on attaining workforce diversity. Current beliefs, which make committees mistakenly feel they are acting fairly, might actually justify biased practices. Awareness of the role of committee members in these processes is an essential first step.

Evaluating medical residents as managers of care: a critical appraisal of assessment methods.

INTRODUCTION: The increasing demands for effective and efficient health care delivery systems worldwide have resulted in an expansion of the desired competencies that physicians need to possess upon graduation. Presently, medical residents require additional professional competencies that can prepare them to practice adequately in a continuously changing health care environment. Recent studies show that despite the importance of competency-based training, the development and evaluation of management competencies in residents during residency training is inadequate. The aim of this literature review was to find out which assessment methods are currently being used to evaluate trainees' management competencies and which, if any, of these methods make use of valid and reliable instruments. METHODS: In September 2012, a thorough search of the literature was performed using the PubMed, Cochrane, Embase®, MEDLINE®, and ERIC databases. Additional searches included scanning the references of relevant articles and sifting through the "related topics" displayed by the databases. RESULTS: A total of 25 out of 178 articles were selected for final review. Four broad categories emerged after analysis that best reflected their content: 1) measurement tools used to evaluate the effect of implemented curricular interventions; 2) measurement tools based on recommendations from consensus surveys or conventions; 3) measurement tools for assessing general competencies, which included care-management; and 4) measurement tools focusing exclusively on care-management competencies. CONCLUSION: Little information was found about (validated) assessment tools being used to measure care-management competence in practice. Our findings suggest that a combination of assessment tools should be used when evaluating residents' care-management competencies.