IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v317y2023ics0277953622009170.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“We're IMGs, and we're often seen as human garbage outside of primary care”: A qualitative investigation of dynamic status hierarchy construction online by medical trainees

Author

Listed:
  • Franklyn, Grace

Abstract

In the United States health care system, “USMDs,” or allopathic US-trained medical graduates, are generally considered higher status than “non-USMDs,” or osteopathic and international medical graduates (also abbreviated as IMGs). Two key aspects of this professional hierarchy have yet to be understood: one, how it is socially and culturally reproduced during specific medical training timepoints, such as the US residency placement cycle; and two, how changes within this hierarchy may be occurring among the new generation of medical trainees and professionals. To answer these questions, I qualitatively analyzed comments from a selection of medical student Reddit posts, called “Name and Shame,” where users discussed their experiences with discrimination and mistreatment during residency interviews spanning 2018 to 2020. From this analysis, I found that after exposure to and discussion of stories of applicant mistreatment, while some students on the forum reproduced this professional hierarchy, others rejected this inequality, with non-USMD users advocating for themselves and USMD students supporting their lower status peers. These findings highlight that the construction and understanding of this USMD/non-USMD hierarchy may be more dynamic than previously thought, especially among contemporary trainees now entering the medical profession.

Suggested Citation

  • Franklyn, Grace, 2023. "“We're IMGs, and we're often seen as human garbage outside of primary care”: A qualitative investigation of dynamic status hierarchy construction online by medical trainees," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:317:y:2023:i:c:s0277953622009170
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115611
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953622009170
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115611?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Johnson, Shirley M. & Kurtz, Margot E., 2002. "Perceptions of philosophic and practice differences between US osteopathic physicians and their allopathic counterparts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 55(12), pages 2141-2148, December.
    2. Bell, Susan E. & Walkover, Lillian, 2021. "The case for refugee physicians: Forced migration of International Medical Graduates in the 21st century," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    3. Underman, Kelly & Kochunilathil, Merlin & McLean, Lauren & Vinson, Alexandra H., 2022. "Online student culture as site for negotiating assessment in medical education," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 310(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anne-Sylvie Bill & Julie Dubois & Jérôme Pasquier & Bernard Burnand & Pierre-Yves Rodondi, 2020. "Osteopathy in the French-speaking part of Switzerland: Practitioners’ profile and scope of back pain management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-14, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:317:y:2023:i:c:s0277953622009170. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.