Experiences of race- and gender-based discrimination among Black female physicians

Recently, in the United States, there has been a strong effort to increase representation of members of social groups underrepresented in medicine (URiM). Experiences of discrimination among URiM group members, including women and people of color, have negative effects on their health and well-being and drive further underrepresentation. Here we report results of a qualitative research study designed to characterize Black female physicians’ experiences of discrimination related to their identities both as women and people of color, in medical education and the practice of medicine. A trained interviewer conducted semi-structured qualitative, in-depth interviews with twenty Black, cis-gender, female physicians working in various fields of medicine. Broadly framed within intersectionality theory and analyzed using a pragmatic analytic approach, all interviews were transcribed, read, coded, and analyzed identifying key emergent themes. Two broad and overlapping themes emerged: (1) experiencing and managing micro/macroaggressions and biases in the workplace; and (2) strategies to overcome experiences of intersectional discrimination. Each theme contained several subthemes, such as “presumed incompetence”, “isolation and exclusion”, “managing burdensome expectations”, “building support systems”, “speaking up”, and “resilience”. Participants described both intersectional and independent forms of discrimination and a range of sources of discrimination, including patients, peers, and colleagues, in their careers as trainees and professionals. Most described minimal and largely ineffective efforts to prevent or mitigate the impact of discrimination at any level of their educational and professional contexts. Black female physicians report experiencing damaging discrimination with few effective intervention efforts in tAheir medical training and workplaces. There is need for more research and evaluation of interventions to reduce discrimination at all levels of education and training.