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Record W4412704280 · doi:10.36834/cmej.79882

Experienced or witnessed racism and microaggressions during medical education: an exploratory survey of medical learners at a large Canadian medical school

2025· article· en· W4412704280 on OpenAlexaffvenueabout
Samara Adler, Jérémie Boivin-Côté, Isabelle Gravel, Chaimaa Ouizzane, Samantha Bizimungu, Claude Julie Bourque, Jean‐Michel Leduc

Bibliographic record

VenueCanadian Medical Education Journal · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldHealth Professions
TopicGlobal Health Workforce Issues
Canadian institutionsUniversité de MontréalMcGill UniversityUniversity of Ottawa
Fundersnot available
KeywordsRacismMedical educationMedical schoolPsychologyMedicineFamily medicineSociologyGender studies

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Background: As institutions strive to incorporate Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Indigeneity, and Accessibility (EDIIA) principles into their policies and curricula, various forms of discrimination persist within the medical education system. The objective of this study was to understand learner experiences related to racism, discrimination and microaggressions in a large Canadian medical school to ultimately inform future efforts to address issues identified. Methods: This survey-based study was distributed to all current medical students and residents at a large Canadian University. Questions focused on lived and witnessed experiences of microaggressions, discrimination or racism during medical education. We computed descriptive statistics and risk ratios for experienced or witnessed events. Results: The survey response rate was 12.4% (321/2579), with 26% of participants self-identifying as Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC). During medical education, 30% of respondents reported experiencing racism or microaggressions, while 51% reported witnessing these events. Attending physicians (31%) and patients/families (22%) were most likely to be identified as responsible. Common proposed solutions by respondents included: anonymous reporting systems, dedicated counsellors from BIPOC groups, education of healthcare professionals on microaggressions and discrimination and increased peer/faculty support. Conclusions: Among participants, this study described a high rate of witnessed or experienced racism or microaggressions during medical education, leading to local interventions to improve the psychological safety of learners.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.004
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.351
Threshold uncertainty score0.707

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.004
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0050.002
Scholarly communication0.0020.001
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.035
GPT teacher head0.450
Teacher spread0.415 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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