Medical Student Values Inform Career Plans in Service & Surgery-A Qualitative Focus Group Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Diversifying the surgical workforce is a critical component of improving care for underserved patients. To recruit surgeons from diverse backgrounds, we must understand how medical students choose their specialty. We investigate how preclinical students contemplate entering a surgical field. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted semistructured focus groups during two iterations of a seminar class called Service Through Surgery. Discussion goals included identifying student values and assessing how they inform early career decisions. We used a systematic, collaborative, and iterative process for transcript analysis, including developing a codebook, assessing inter-rater reliability, and analyzing themes. RESULTS: Twenty-four preclinical medical students from diverse backgrounds participated in seven focus groups; most were women (16; 67%), in their first year of medical school (19; 79%), and interested in surgery (17; 71%). Participants ranked professional fulfillment, spending time with family, and serving their communities and/or underserved populations among their most important values and agreed that conducting groundbreaking research, working long hours, and finding time for leisure activities were the least important. We constructed a framework to describe student responses surrounding their diverse visions for service in future surgical careers through individual doctoring interactions, roles in academia, and broader public service. CONCLUSIONS: Our framework provides a basis for greater understanding and study of the ways in which preclinical medical students think about their personal values and visions for service in potential future surgical careers. This research can guide early interventions in medical education to promote diversity and care for the underserved in surgery.

Service through surgery: A quasi-experimental comparison study on the impact of a preclinical seminar course on diverse mentorship and attitudes towards the underserved.

BACKGROUND: Increased surgical workforce diversity diminishes health disparities. METHODS: Researchers recruited and nonrandomly enrolled participants into intervention and comparison groups for a quasi-experimental study of the impact of a seminar course on student exposure to diverse mentorship and service through surgery. All metrics were analyzed with chi-squared and paired t-tests. RESULTS: 109 students participated (34 intervention, 75 comparison). There were significant differences in the percentage of participants that newly met a surgeon of their race (intervention, comparison: 100%, 25%), their race and gender (80%, 21%), their religion (23%, 9%), and who completed health disparities research (90%, 45%, p-value for all <0.05). There was a nonsignificant change in participants' attitudes towards underserved populations in intervention and comparison groups. CONCLUSIONS: This preclinical surgery seminar course increased exposure of underrepresented students to surgeons from diverse backgrounds and may impact student attitudes towards the underserved. This class represents a replicable model for increasing mentorship.