Comparing Evaluations of Family Medicine Residents by Gender and Ethnicity

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Faculty evaluations of resident physicians have previously identified qualitative and quantitative differences based on gender and ethnicity, but largely outside of the specialty of family medicine. This study sought to determine whether trends in evaluation biases from other specialties were also present in faculty evaluations of family medicine residents. METHODS: We performed qualitative and quantitative analysis on faculty evaluations of residents from academic years 2019-2020 through 2023-2024 from a single urban academic family medicine residency program site. We performed quantitative analyses to evaluate Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) milestone ratings, and we performed quantitative and qualitative text-based analyses of the comments using LIWC-22 and N-gram. RESULTS: Quantitative analyses demonstrated no significant differences in ACGME milestone ratings based on gender or underrepresented in medicine status. Qualitative analysis of evaluations showed some differences among ethnic groups. Asian residents were noted to have less feminine language while Asian and Hispanic residents were noted to have more communion language. The only gender/ethnicity interaction noted was that Asian women had less communion language present than their Asian men counterparts. CONCLUSIONS: While no significant quantitative differences existed in resident evaluations based on gender and ethnicity, some qualitative differences were identified based on ethnicity. As family medicine moves into its competency-based medical education era, monitoring faculty evaluations for biases will be critical to ensure equitable determination of clinical competence.