Scrubbed and Prepped: Navigating the Culture of OB/GYN Clerkships in Medical Education

• In Event: 30858 - States, Laws, and Clinicians: Toward Reproductive Justice

Abstract

Medical sociology and anthropology have a long-standing interest in the training and socialization of doctors, particularly OB/GYNs (Jenkins 2019; Jenkins 2023; Davis-Floyd 2003). Medical education in the United States includes courses and experiential learning in the form of clerkships. Matching and residencies, after graduation, have been studied by several scholars, but less attention has been given to clerkships, which have been called a "black box" (Dornan et al. 2014). To address the urgent need to understand the structure and culture of medical bias, our paper examines student experiences of selection, socialization, and training to be OB/GYNs by examining their expectations for and experiences of the OB/GYN clerkship. The present study focuses on the "black box" of the OB/GYN clerkship to better understand the structures and processes by which institutional norms and practices are learned, internalized, and institutionalized – how institutional bias is reproduced. In short, our study explores a gap in the literature between medical coursework and residency, to understand, how does a group of diverse, well-intentioned students, who aim to become women's health providers, instead become the doctors who patients identify as abusers (Morris et al. 2023)? We use a longitudinal research design and are enrolling up to 200 participants, all current US medical students who will complete an OB/GYN clerkship in the next six months. We interview them before and after their clerkship. (As of February 20, 2025, we have finished the pre- and post-clerkship interviews of 46 respondents from across the US.) This paper focuses on OB/GYN culture and students' change of specialty. By examining the black box of the OB/GYN clerkship, at the root of selection, socialization, and training of future clinicians, research can shed light on processes that shape birthing experiences and cause trauma.

Authors

• Theresa Morris, Texas A&M University-College Station

• Joan H. Robinson, CUNY-City College

• Emily Flowers, Texas A & M University