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Medical students studying with professor
The study did not examine the cause, but it may well be discrimination, according to the authors.
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual medical students tend to leave school at higher rates than their non-LGB peers, perhaps due to discrimination, according to a study published recently in JAMA Network Open.
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Mytien Nguyen of the Yale School of Medicine and colleagues examined numbers going from 2014 to 2017 from the Association of American Medical Colleges data warehouse and respondents to the Matriculating Student Questionnaire. They found that the rate of attrition, defined as dismissal or withdrawal from medical school for any reason, was 4.2 percent for bisexual students and 3.7 percent for gay and lesbian students, versus 2.4 percent for those who are not LGB.
Students self-reported their age, sex, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation on the questionnaire. It did not include gender identity.
There was complete demographic data for 80.8 percent of respondents. Of these, 35.6 percent were aged 22 or younger and 64.3 percent 23 or older; 51 percent were female and 49 percent male; 19 percent identified as Asian, 6.2 percent as Black, 6.2 percent as Hispanic, 57.9 percent as white, and 10.5 percent as another race and ethnicity. There were 6.3 percent identifying as LGB.
The researchers looked at the intersection of these identities and found that LGB Hispanic students, both male and female, had the highest odds of attrition.
“Although future studies need to examine the cause of these disparities in attrition, LGB students experience discrimination within medical training environments, which may lead to risk of attrition,” the authors noted.
Both LGB and Hispanic students “may encounter less supportive attitudes toward homosexuality, often more prevalent among recent immigrants or first-generation households, and traditional cultural values around notions of masculinity, authority, and gender roles, perpetuating rigid expectations around sexuality and gender expression and alienating Hispanic LGB students,” they continued. Medical schools often don’t address Hispanic-specific discrimination issues, and that may lessen social support for these students, they added.
The study, they wrote, was limited because it depended on self-reported data, which did not include “other marginalized sexual orientations (asexual, pansexual), genders (transgender), and Hispanic nationalities.”
Future studies should further examine the intersections of various identities and address attrition rates, something that “is essential to developing support services that empower student success,” they concluded.
