Barriers to Black Medical Students and Residents Pursuing and Completing Surgical Residency in Canada: A Qualitative Analysis.

BACKGROUND: The limited available data suggest that the Canadian surgical workforce does not reflect the racial diversity of the patient population it serves, despite the well-established benefits of patient-provider race concordance. There have been no studies to date that characterize the systemic and individual challenges faced by Black medical students in matching to and successfully finishing training in a surgical specialty within a Canadian context that can explain this underrepresentation. STUDY DESIGN: Using critical qualitative inquiry and purposive sampling to ensure gender, geographical, and student/trainee year heterogeneity, we recruited self-identifying Black medical students and surgical residents across Canada. Online in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were analyzed through an inductive reflexive narrative thematic process by four analysts. RESULTS: 27 participants including 18 medical students and 9 residents, were interviewed. The results showed three major themes that characterized their experiences: journey to and through medicine, perceptions of the surgical culture, and recommendations to improve the student experience. Medical students identified lack of mentorship and representation, as well as experiences with racism as the main barriers to pursuing surgical training. Surgical trainees cited systemic racism, lack of representation and insufficient safe spaces as the key deterrents to program completion. The intersection with gender exponentially increased these identified barriers. CONCLUSIONS: Except for a few surgical programs, medical schools across Canada do not offer a safe space for Black students and trainees to access and complete surgical training. An urgent change is needed to provide diverse mentorship that is transparent, acknowledges the real challenges related to systemic racism and biases, and is inclusive of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Exploring Biologic Treatment Hesitancy Among Black and Indigenous Populations in Canada: a Review.

Biologics are becoming an increasingly important part of patient care across Canada. Recent studies from the USA show that Black patients are less likely than White patients to receive biologic treatment for several medical conditions. The relative lack of race-based data in Canada makes it difficult to replicate such studies in Canada. As a result, there is a paucity of literature that explores the association between biologic usage and race in Canada. Our review aims to explore the factors that might be driving racial treatment disparity in Canada that likely parallels the inequalities found in the USA. We provide a summary of the available literature on the factors that contribute to biologic treatment hesitancy among Black and Indigenous populations in Canada. We highlight several solutions that have been proposed in the literature to address biologic treatment hesitancy. Our review found that biologic treatment decision at the individual level can be very complex as patient's decisions are influenced by social inputs from family and trusted community members, biologic-related factors (negative injection experience, fear of needles, formulation, and unfamiliarity), cultural tenets (beliefs, values, perception of illness), and historical and systemic factors (past research injustices, socioeconomic status, patient-physician relationship, clinical trial representation). Some proposed solutions to address biologic treatment hesitancy among Black and Indigenous populations include increasing the number of Black and Indigenous researchers involved in and leading clinical trials, formally training physicians and healthcare workers to deliver culturally competent care, and eliminating financial barriers to accessing medications. Further research is needed to characterize and address race-based new treatment inequalities and hesitancy in Canada.

COVID-19 Skin Manifestations in Skin of Colour.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) skin manifestations have been increasingly reported in medical literature. Recent discussions have identified a lack of images of skin of color (SOC) patients with COVID-19 related skin findings despite people with skin of color being disproportionately affected with the disease. There have been calls to prioritize the identification of COVID-19 skin manifestations in patients with SOC and disseminate these findings. The objective of this article is to review the existing literature on COVID-19 skin manifestations and, where possible, discuss how they may present differently in patients with SOC. Further research is needed to allow primary care physicians and dermatologists to be aware of and easily identify patients with cutaneous findings that may be secondary to COVID-19. Patients presenting with idiopathic dermatologic manifestations should be considered for COVID-19 testing and follow public health guidelines for self-isolation.

Proposed framework for a national set of reporting measures in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

An effective strategy to control the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic takes into account inputs from many domains, including community epidemiology, surveillance and testing, contact tracing capacity, support for vulnerable populations, and health care system strain. Provincial and federal governments currently lack a universal approach to presenting relevant pandemic data from these domains to the general public in a way that engages them in decision making and promotes adherence to policies. We propose a framework to analyze COVID-19 pandemic data on an ongoing basis using inputs from these five domains, which can be scaled to the local public health unit, provincial, or national level. Data analysis was qualitative and semi-quantitative because there was a paucity of publicly available data on surveillance and testing, contact tracing, and health care system strain, which limited our ability to perform internal and external validation of our model. We urge the federal government to mandate a core set of reporting items across local, provincial, and federal jurisdictions that may then be used to perform validation and implementation of our proposed framework.

Une stratégie efficace pour contrôler la pandémie continue de maladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) tient compte de l'apport de divers domaines, soit l'épidémiologie communautaire, la surveillance et le dépistage, la capacité de traçage des contacts, le soutien de populations vulnérables et la souche du système de santé. À l'heure actuelle, les gouvernements provinciaux et fédéral ne proposent pas de démarche universelle pour présenter des données pertinentes sur ces domaines de la pandémie au grand public, de manière à le faire participer aux prises de décision et à promouvoir l'adhésion aux politiques. Les auteurs proposent un outil pour procéder à l'analyse des données sur la pandémie de COVID-19 à partir des données de ces cinq domaines, qui peut être adapté pour les unités sanitaires locales, provinciales ou nationale. L'analyse des données était qualitative et semi-quantitative en raison du peu de données publiques sur la surveillance et le dépistage, le traçage des contacts et la souche du système de santé, qui ont limité notre capacité de procéder à une validation interne et externe de notre modèle par l'analyse quantitative. Les auteurs exhortent le gouvernement fédéral à mandater un ensemble d'éléments à signaler dans les régions sociosanitaires locales, provinciales et fédérale qui peuvent ensuite utilisés pour valider mettre en œuvre le cadre proposé.