Study: Small percentage of Black individuals are becoming surgeons

Editor's Note

A study on the trend of general surgery residency application, matriculation, and graduation for Black trainees over a 13-year period, titled “Examination of Intersectionality and the Pipeline for Black Academic Surgeons” and published by JAMA Surgery on February 9, found that few Black individuals apply to surgery programs and even fewer go on to graduate, JAMA Network April 5 reports.

“Black individuals represented only 6.3% of all US general surgery residency graduates in 2018,” the study found. Here are additional findings:

• Applications from Black women significantly increased from 2.2% in 2005 to 3.5% in 2018.
• However, “no progress was made in retaining Black women in surgical residency,” with data showing that their matriculation and graduation rates stayed around 2% during the study period.
• Applications from Black men stayed relatively the same since 2005, with 4.6% of applicants in 2018.
• However, their matriculation and graduation rates declined over the study period, with only 2.7% of general surgery residency graduates in 2018 being Black men, down from 4.3% in 2005.

The study investigators examined data from 2005 to 2018, encompassing 71,687 applicants to general surgery residency programs, 26,237 first-year matriculants to general surgery residency, and 24,893 graduates. The demographic breakdown of the applications was as follows: 43.5% White, 23.2% Asian, 8.3% Black, and 3.4% Latino. About 34% of the applicants were women, JAMA notes.