As the 2018 SVI deadline approaches, I felt I should bump this topic. Although I am posting under a pseudonym at this time, I am an active member for many years. I feel that the SVI is only a method to screen applicants; and in my mind a way to ostracize individuals. Firstly, I feel that using a one sided interview is quite devious. There's no give and take that occurs in a classic interview scenario. Secondly, being given a determinant score based on those answers is even more confounding. According to the feedback and posted utilization of the SVI interview, I am under the impression that program directors can watch some/all of the interviewee's responses, which can easily be taken out of context. Additionally, if an applicant looks amazing on paper (ie. transcripts, USMLE scores, LoR's, etc) and is being considered for an in-person interview, the director can screen the video and discriminate against the individual on the basis of English proficiency, accent, race, ethnicity, or even personal character. For example, I'm not one of the individuals that uses IG, FB, Snapchat or the like for video chats as I don't feel comfortable broadcasting my life to the world and thus do not have practice or confidence in front of a camera. I chose to practice medicine not to be a Hollywood actor or news reporter. I know I do not feel comfortable in the public eye, and thus did not choose those careers.
This type of screening reminds me of a case that was an instrumental moment in my life. My mother is an foreign born IMG. When she immigrated to the US, she took an Americanized name and she trained very hard to lose her accent and to pass her Board Exams. She was contacted by phone and then given the opportunity to interview at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1980's. She was 8 months pregnant with me at the time. She drove to the interview during the winter time from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she had completed her training. Upon entry to the office, she was immediately instructed by the secretary they would not be accepting immigrants to the position and she was granted the interview as she had no accent and her name was not ethnic. The audacity. She was quite upset and distraught, but took a life lesson from that experience. She decided right then and there that she would name her children Americanized names rather than ethnic names to give them more opportunity in this country. My sister and I both have Irish names, for this reason. And on some level I am quite cognizant that I have been granted opportunities in the past as I was not screened as an person of ethnicity. I attended an interview last year in the area of the Appalachian Mountains. and upon arriving at the airport was to meet the residency program's shuttle which would take me to my accommodations. I was passed over three times in the airport lobby, as I was told " they were looking for a white guy," due to my name. Currently in this country, we have returned to that mentality of limiting/granting positions based on ethnicity/race rather than the best individual for the the position, and I fear that the SVI only adds to that slippery slope.
While the scorers of the SVI might be trained on avoiding "unintentional bias" as it's called in all the AAMC literature, program directors are not required to take these types of training. I can completely understand the use of two person video/online/Skype interviews to gauge an applicant, but having a one sided video interview to prompts presented on the screen seems very malicious, with only the intent of removing applicants from a pool. I, in my right mind, can't see a program director using the interview to vet a subpar candidate for the means of elevating their status in the rank order; as their ERAS application would already have been filtered out by the respective program's established ERAS criteria. Thus an individual will make it past the first ERAS criteria (date of graduation, USMLE scores, Visa Status, etc), but can be discriminated against on the basis of the SVI responses and content. These are my thoughts. I would like to hear what other thinks. Moreover, he's an article I discovered which eloquently illustrates my thoughts.
