G. Lynch was a fourth-year medical student, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, at the time this was written. She is now a first-year preliminary internal medicine resident, Morristown Medical Center, Morristown, New Jersey. T. Holloway is a second-year psychiatry resident, Yale-New Haven Medical Center Program and Yale Neuroscience Research Training Program, New Haven, Connecticut. D. Muller is dean for medical education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York. A.-G. Palermo is associate dean for diversity and inclusion in biomedical education, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York.
Acad Med. 2020 May;95(5):700-703. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003087.
Medical education must provide students with a delicate balance of academic rigor, equity, and wellness. While the medical education community espouses all these values, the authors believe the way medical students are evaluated and rewarded undermines equity and wellness. Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society (AΩA) membership is arguably the highest honor that a medical student can achieve. In the short term, it opens doors to the most selective training opportunities, and in the long term, ushers students into an elite group of future physician leaders. Yet recent data have demonstrated that AΩA is disproportionately awarded to white students.At Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS), the authors observed that students underrepresented in science and medicine were persistently underrepresented among those selected for AΩA. They describe efforts at ISMMS to reduce bias in the selection process and the ultimate decision to suspend medical student selection for AΩA altogether. The authors argue that selection to AΩA reinforces the structural biases and social privilege that are embedded in medical education and undermines the ability to deliver an educational experience that has as its core tenets equity and wellness. Suspending participation in student selection for AΩA is an important step toward recognizing that medical school learning environments continue to privilege white students over students who are underrepresented in medicine.
医学教育必须为学生提供学术严谨性、公平性和健康的微妙平衡。虽然医学教育界拥护所有这些价值观，但作者认为，评估和奖励医学生的方式破坏了公平性和健康。阿尔法欧米茄阿尔法荣誉医学协会（AΩA）会员资格可以说是医学生所能获得的最高荣誉。短期内，它为最具选择性的培训机会打开了大门，从长远来看，它将学生们引入了未来医师领袖的精英群体。然而，最近的数据表明，AΩA 不成比例地授予白人学生。在西奈山伊坎医学院（ISMMS），作者观察到，在科学和医学方面代表性不足的学生在被选为 AΩA 的学生中一直代表性不足。他们描述了 ISMMS 在减少选择过程中的偏见以及最终决定完全暂停医学生选择 AΩA 的努力。作者认为，选择 AΩA 强化了医学教育中固有的结构性偏见和社会特权，破坏了提供以公平性和健康为核心原则的教育体验的能力。暂停参与 AΩA 的学生选拔是朝着认识到医学院学习环境继续优先考虑白人学生而不是医学代表性不足的学生迈出的重要一步。
