Premium
Does Applicant Gender Have an Effect on Standardized Letters of Evaluation Obtained During Medical Student Emergency Medicine Rotations?
Author(s) -
Andrusaitis Jessica,
Clark Clelia,
Saadat Soheil,
Billimek John,
Paradise Sara,
Wray Alisa,
Wiechmann Warren,
Toohey Shan,
BoysenOsborn Megan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
aem education and training
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.49
H-Index - 9
ISSN - 2472-5390
DOI - 10.1002/aet2.10394
Subject(s) - inclusion (mineral) , observational study , rank (graph theory) , medicine , mann–whitney u test , test (biology) , family medicine , psychology , social psychology , mathematics , paleontology , combinatorics , biology
Background The standardized letter of evaluation ( SLOE ) in emergency medicine ( EM ) is one of the most important items in a student's application to EM residency and replaces narrative letters of recommendation. The SLOE ranks students into quantile categories in comparison to their peers for overall performance during an EM clerkship and for their expected rank list position. Gender differences exist in several assessment methods in undergraduate and graduate medical education. No authors have recently studied whether there are differences in the global assessment of men and women on the SLOE . Objectives The objective of this study was to determine if there is an effect of student gender on the outcome of a SLOE . Methods This was a retrospective observational study examining SLOE s from applications to a large urban, academic EM residency program from 2015 to 2016. Composite scores ( CS s), comparative rank scores ( CRS s), and rank list position scores ( RLPS s) on the SLOE were compared for female and male applicants using Mann‐Whitney U‐test. Results From a total 1,408 applications, 1,038 applicants met inclusion criteria (74%). We analyzed 2,092 SLOE s from these applications. Female applicants were found to have slightly lower and thus better CRS s, RLPS s, and CS s than men. The mean CRS for women was 2.27 and 2.45 for men (p < 0.001); RLPS for women was 2.32 and 2.52 for men (p < 0.001) and CS was 4.59 for women and 4.97 for men (p < 0.001). Conclusions Female applicants have somewhat better performance on the EM SLOE than their male counterparts.