Clinical trial NCT04694339: Minority Barriers in Anesthesia
Official title: Minority Barriers to Professional Advancement in Anesthesia
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: RECRUITING
Conditions: Minority Barrier
Lack of Mentoring Program
Pass Over for Promotion
Lead sponsor: Tufts Medical Center
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: American Society of Anesthesiologists
First posted: 2021-01-05
Enrollment: 250
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 25
Maximum age (years): 75
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Observational model: OTHER
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Medical students, residents, attending anesthesiologists, members of ASA, self-identifying as minorities

Brief summary: The investigators aim to survey members of the ASA (medical students, residents, and attendings) who self-identify as minorities to assess if there are systemic barriers to minorities pursuing leadership positions. The investigators hypothesize that structural issues such as a lack of formalized mentoring programs play a role in reduced minority professional advancement.

Detailed description: Within the American Society of Anesthesiology (ASA) underrepresented minorities comprise only 6.0% of leadership. Within the ASA, women additionally only hold 21% of House of Delegates and state society officer positions, while comprising 38% of the national anesthesiology workforce.

The investigators will be using a survey via SurveyMonkey with potential for an opt-in phone or Zoom interview via the interviewee using the contact information at the bottom of the SurveyMonkey. The questions for the Survey Monkey are below. The investigators will use the Tufts HIPAA-compliant Zoom account for any Zoom interviews.

In order to deidentify the phone and Zoom interviews, investigators will not label any transcripts of the interviews with names or identifying information. The investigators will also destroy all correspondence after a time and date for the phone/Zoom interview is set.

Participants will be self-selecting for this survey. The investigators aim to email the coordinators of the ASA (medical student component, resident component, general body) who will then forward investigators' contact letter and survey to participants' constituents. Given the self-selecting nature of the survey, the investigators are not specifically targeting individuals who identify as minorities--as there are variable definitions to this term--but rather investigators will use the survey to evaluate for trends within the responses. The investigators hypothesize that gender/race/sexual orientation may play a role in career choices for individuals, which will be elucidated through the survey responses. The investigators will sort the surveys into groups to where minority identification played a large role in career versus where it did not and then calculate the trend as a percentage of the total survey responses.

The investigators recognize that it may be more possible to provide in-depth responses to the survey via a phone or Zoom interview. Therefore, investigators have included a contact information in the contact letter and the Survey Monkey and will give participants the option of doing a phone/Zoom interview instead of the Survey Monkey.

Survey Questions:

Why did you decide to pursue medicine as a career? Why anesthesia? Did gender play a role in your decision to pursue medicine? In your decision to do anesthesia? Did race play a role in your decision to pursue medicine? In your decision to do anesthesia? Do you have any regrets about your career choice? Where do you currently practice? What led you to choose that practice setting? What mentorship resources were available to you along your career path? What is a professional success you had? What is a perceived failure you may have had? How did that effect your career? What if your five-year plan? Ten-year plan? Twenty? What is a minority?

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Members of ASA, medical students, residents, attending anesthesiologists, self-identifying as minorities

Exclusion Criteria:

* Non-ASA members

Primary outcomes:
measure: Minority barriers
timeFrame: through study completion, an average of 6 months
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Boston
country: United States
facility: Iwona Bonney
state: Massachusetts
Study officials:
affiliation: Tufts Medical Center
name: Shara S Azad, MD
role: STUDY_DIRECTOR
affiliation: Tufts Medical Center
name: Neeti Sadana, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References: