Discrimination

[Meritina]

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Does anyone here feel very prone to being discriminated among residents/attendings, such as being treated poorly, recieving poorer evals, or having more expected from you to be considered a good student, based on your:

age
SEX**
RACE**
weight - too high or low
beauty, or lack thereof
socialness or personality
clothing
financial background
sexual preferences

If so, what happened? and did you do make any changes to be more accepted or to try and remediate the discrimination?

I know many probably would not want to come forward and admit to this, but i just wish to know if others believe they have experienced any discrimination and if you have had any success in dealing with it.

 

[Mirror Form]

Being an attractive female is a huge advantage on rotations like surgery where a lot of the attendings are men and a lot of the residents are single guys that don't have time to go out and meet girls.

 

[lf777]

Hi

Don't forget nationality/country of origin. Being an IMG myself I am very happy that it never happened to me. But I am sure that it occurs occasionally.

lf

 

[irlandesa]

Being an attractive female is a huge advantage on rotations like surgery where a lot of the attendings are men and a lot of the residents are single guys that don't have time to go out and meet girls.

true, and even being a somewhat reasonable looking female is a huge disadvantage on Peds and Ob/Gyn, which are more likely to be filled with catty females with serious self-esteem issues. Also, judging by who got AOA at my school in the class of '04, being Asian and/or black seems to be a disadvantage as well; sucks that stereotypes are alive and well.

 

[Purifyer]

socialness or personality
clothing

I think it's entirely appropriate for students to be prejudiced against in the above catergories. Personality has a huge influence on how effective a doctor someone can be, as does how shy/extroverted they are.

Clothing/appearance is relevant as well. It's not only a sign of 'professionalism', more importantly you want to indulge your patient's prejudices. Well dressed students/doctors inspire confidence/respect in a patient, confidence/respect inspires compliance to treatment and perhaps greater release of info which drastically alters outcome obviously.

I can't help but snicker at the fact that irelandesa is posting in a thread regarding prejudice when she started the 'where can I go to avoid IMGs?' thread 😉

 

[Mirror Form]

true, and even being a somewhat reasonable looking female is a huge disadvantage on Peds and Ob/Gyn, which are more likely to be filled with catty females with serious self-esteem issues.

Good point, and those peds attendings are the worst b/c they'll act super nice to your face but then give bad evals. At least the Ob-gyn attendings are more up front about not liking you.

Also, judging by who got AOA at my school in the class of '04, being Asian and/or black seems to be a disadvantage as well; sucks that stereotypes are alive and well.

Isn't junior year AOA based almost solely on test scores? Senior year may be biased though. Don't forget that disadvantaged minorities benefit from AA when applying to med school, but probably don't benefit from it in terms of making AOA. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a lower % of disadvantaged minorities in any given med school's AOA.

 

[irlandesa]

I think it's entirely appropriate for students to be prejudiced against in the above catergories. Personality has a huge influence on how effective a doctor someone can be, as does how shy/extroverted they are.

Clothing/appearance is relevant as well. It's not only a sign of 'professionalism', more importantly you want to indulge your patient's prejudices. Well dressed students/doctors inspire confidence/respect in a patient, confidence/respect inspires compliance to treatment and perhaps greater release of info which drastically alters outcome obviously.

I can't help but snicker at the fact that irelandesa is posting in a thread regarding prejudice when she started the 'where can I go to avoid IMGs?' thread 😉

snicker away, for no matter how wonderful your personality is (which I doubt since your name smacks of facism), since if you come here as an IMG (I didn't know NZ had a med school(s), you are not too likely to end up with the most talented and lovely US grads on the planet during residency. yes, you get to deal with American ****ers like me with bad personalities (gee, if only I could get some guy to put a big ring on my finger then spend all day on here bragging about my perfect grades like a certain SDNer from the midwest, then I would have a GREAT personality! 🙄 ).. get over yourself, if you had that great a life (and were an actual med student) with the perfect wife/gf /bf, you wouldn't be making a "hitlist" of people who offended you on here.

 

[Purifyer]

snicker away, for no matter how wonderful your personality is (which I doubt since your name smacks of facism)

lol

(I didn't know NZ had a med school(s)

I'm curious as to what you actually do know. I'm assuming not much 😉

you are not too likely to end up with the most talented and lovely US grads on the planet during residency. yes, you get to deal with American ****ers like me with bad personalities

I think this merely deserves an 'lol' and a star for being able to mix such vitriol with what otherwise amounts to verbal diarrhoea (You can look up what vitriol means in your dictionary).

(gee, if only I could get some guy to put a big ring on my finger then spend all day on here bragging about my perfect grades like a certain SDNer from the midwest, then I would have a GREAT personality! 🙄 )

When making an argument it really has to be relevant and concise. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to criticise you on this point.

.. get over yourself, if you had that great a life (and were an actual med student) with the perfect wife/gf /bf, you wouldn't be making a "hitlist" of people who offended you on here.

Hitlist? Offended?? I'm making fun of you in jest. I find the picture of an ignorant, hypocritical, mildly unattractive, female American medical student droning on regarding things she knows nothing about quite amusing.

There are only three types of people whose opinions concern me; those with more experience, those with more intelligence, and those with greater ambition. You aren't in this list 🙂

 

[zensurg]

i can't tell if you're trying to be humorous or an ass. either way, neither one of you needs to be so spiteful. seriously. and how do you know who's more intelligent than you anyway?

 

[QuantumX]

I'm actually surprised that I'm hearing that this happens in the states. I thought that these things can easily lead to a discriminator being sued.. When I did 2 months of elective rotation in Internal Medicine at Baylor's last winter I didn't notice any such thing, though I'm Arabic. Maybe because of the high volume of IMGs. Everybody was friendly.

 

[St. James]

I'm actually surprised that I'm hearing that this happens in the states. I thought that these things can easily lead to a discriminator being sued.. When I did 2 months of elective rotation in Internal Medicine at Baylor's last winter I didn't notice any such thing, though I'm Arabic. Maybe because of the high volume of IMGs. Everybody was friendly.

well then you must be beauutiful. Just kidding. it's great that you had a positive experience. while suing is rare, i do think discrimination/favoritism happens often in medicine but is undereported b/c students/interns/residents are worried about retaliation (subtley, maybe in the form of not as good letters, or word of mouth among attendings, etc). certain schools have set up active committees similar to human resource depts at companies where issues can be raised more anonymously. hopefully in the future, this will help weed out blatent discrimination. you'll never get rid of the more subtle interactions that benefit the better looking -- those seem to be innate and in all walks of life...