Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Med Educ. 2015 Jan;49(1):93-102. doi: 10.1111/medu.12487.
Applicants to US residency training programmes are required to submit a personal statement, the content of which is flexible but often requires them to describe their career goals and aspirations. Despite their importance, no systematic research has explored common themes and gender differences inherent to these statements.
This study was conducted to analyse US applicants' Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) personal statements using two automated textual analysis programs, and to assess for common themes and gender-associated differences.
A retrospective cohort study of 2138 personal statements (containing 1,485,255 words) from candidates from 377 national and international medical schools applying to US internal medicine (IM) residency programmes through ERAS was conducted. A mathematical analysis of text segments using a recursive algorithm was performed; two different specifications of the text segments were used to conduct an internal validation.
Five statistically significant thematic classes were identified through independent review by the researchers. These were best defined as referring to: the appeal of the residency programme; memorable patients; health care as public policy; research and academia, and family inspiration. Some themes were common to all applications. However, important gender-specific differences were identified. Notably, men were more likely to describe personal attributes and to self-promote, whereas women more frequently expressed the communicative and team-based aspects of doctoring. The results were externally validated using a second software program. Although these data comprise part of the national pool, they represent applicants to a single specialty at a single institution.
By applying textual analysis to material derived from a national cohort, we identified common narrative themes in the personal statements of future US physicians, noting differences between men and women. Together, these data provide novel insight into the dominant discourse of doctoring in this generation of students applying for further training in US IM residency programmes, and depict a diverse group of applicants with multiple motivations, desires and goals. Furthermore, differences seen between men and women add to the growing understanding of bias in medical education. Training programmes may benefit by adapting curricula to foster such diverse interests.
申请美国住院医师培训项目的人需要提交一份个人陈述，其内容具有灵活性，但通常要求他们描述自己的职业目标和抱负。尽管这些陈述很重要，但没有系统的研究探讨过这些陈述中固有的常见主题和性别差异。
本研究使用两个自动化文本分析程序分析美国申请人的电子住院医师申请服务（ERAS）个人陈述，评估常见主题和与性别相关的差异。
对通过 ERAS 向美国内科住院医师培训项目申请的 377 家国内外医学院的 2138 份个人陈述（包含 1485255 个单词）进行回顾性队列研究。使用递归算法对文本片段进行数学分析；使用两个不同的文本片段规范进行内部验证。
通过研究人员的独立审查，确定了五个具有统计学意义的主题类别。这些类别最好定义为：住院医师项目的吸引力；难忘的患者；医疗保健作为公共政策；研究和学术界，以及家庭激励。一些主题适用于所有申请。然而，也确定了重要的性别特定差异。值得注意的是，男性更倾向于描述个人属性和自我推销，而女性则更频繁地表达医生工作中的沟通和团队合作方面。使用第二个软件程序对结果进行了外部验证。尽管这些数据构成了全国范围内的数据的一部分，但它们代表了在单一机构申请单一专业的申请人。
通过将文本分析应用于来自全国队列的材料，我们确定了未来美国医生个人陈述中的常见叙述主题，并注意到男性和女性之间的差异。这些数据共同为这一代申请美国内科住院医师培训项目进一步培训的学生的医生主导话语提供了新的见解，并描绘了一群具有多种动机、愿望和目标的多样化申请人。此外，男性和女性之间的差异增加了对医学教育中偏见的理解。培训计划可能会受益于调整课程，以促进这种多样化的兴趣。
