VIDEO: Equitable access for foreign medical graduates strengthens research, patient care
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In this installment of Healio’s diversity, equity and inclusion video series with ASGE, Yakira David, MD, MBBS, explains how barriers not only affect the careers of foreign medical graduates but also the care of underserved communities.
“It is well-established that diversity within the physician workforce, such as it reflects the population that it serves, is one modifiable factor that can contribute to reducing disparities that are race-based,” David, senior associate consultant at Mayo Clinic Health System, said. “A major barrier to diversifying the GI workforce is a suboptimal presence of groups identified as being underrepresented in medicine within our education and training pipeline.”
Among those traditionally classified as underrepresented in medicine, approximately 45% of Hispanic and 32% of Black medical graduates in the U.S. are foreign medical graduates, David told Healio. With foreign medical graduates more likely to practice in underserved areas and treat racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as low-income populations, it becomes critical to “explore factors that may hinder them from entering fields such as gastroenterology,” she said.
Existing barriers include a lower likelihood for residency programs to rank international medical graduates, as well as difficulty in obtaining both visa sponsorship and research visas.
“In the interest of removing barriers to diversity, it may be worthwhile to revisit some of these visa restrictions to allow for more equitable access of foreign medical grads to get into GI training and maximize their potential contributions to the field over the course of their career,” David said. “The overall byproduct of this will be increasing diversity amongst our faculty in gastroenterology and hepatology and overall providing better research and clinical care to all diverse populations.”
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