Seeing Is Believing: How Social Media Is Challenging Physician Stereotypes

Social Media: Flattening Hierarchies for Women and Black, Indigenous, People Of Color (BIPOC) to Enter the Room Where It Happens

Social media platforms are widely used to connect people across multiple settings, including country of origin, profession, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, seniority, and training. Groups that have been marginalized or historically excluded from decision-making encounters may lack formal mentors/sponsors because of a lack of representation of women and Black, Indigenous, People Of Color (BIPOC) in senior leadership positions. This can serve as a barrier to professional advancement at all stages of career development. Identifying and connecting with these potential mentors/sponsors outside of one's institutional space can be challenging. For this reason, leveraging social media to develop these professional relationships through flattened hierarchies can allow for professional networking beyond traditional mechanisms. Here we aim to describe how individuals can connect through social media to advance their careers and scientific and clinical expertise, advocate for communities, and provide high-quality communication to the public.

Professional stereotypes among specialties and fields of work within the veterinary community

BACKGROUND

Medical specialties hold varying degrees of prestige, stemming from the existence of stereotypes among them. These have been shown to lead to prejudice against specific specialists, which not only influences career choices but also affects the perception of equality among specialties.

METHOD

The aim of the research was to determine the presence of stereotypes in the UK veterinary community. Using an online questionnaire, participants were asked to provide an adjective that best characterises 15 specialties, in addition to their perceptions on prestige and gender association. Word cloud analysis coupled with sentiment analysis in Python using the language processing software Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) was used to assess sentiments with respect to the adjectives.

RESULTS

There were 665 questionnaire respondents, and there was evidence of their construction of specialty-specific stereotypes. Some specialties were perceived more negatively than others, including equine general practitioners, surgeons, pathologists, dermatologists and public health veterinarians/epidemiologists. Gender bias was identified within this study, most prominently within production animal and behavioural medicine veterinarians. The most prestigious specialties were neurology, surgery and cardiology.

CONCLUSION

Specialty-specific stereotypes exist within the veterinary community. Acknowledging their existence is a first step to recognising the influence they have on career choices.