Status Separation as a Mechanism for Elite Reproduction in Residency Training

• In Event: 3276 - Medical Education: History, Status, and Reform

Abstract

This study elaborates the informal processes that allow professional elites in medical education to protect themselves from non-elite competitors. Drawing on ethnographic data from an elite medical residency program, I argue that status beliefs espoused by key program administrators influenced recruitment practices, which simultaneously ensured the exclusion of non-elites while passing for a meritocratic approach. The study casts new light on a once-classic areas of medical sociology—the inner-workings of recruitment in medical education—and makes the case that more attention is needed the unspoken, covert and often pernicious processes which underlie patterns of professional inequality.

Author

• Tania M. Jenkins, Temple University