“It’s a Little Different for Men”—Sponsorship and Gender in Academic Medicine: a Qualitative Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Women remain underrepresented in top leadership positions in academic medicine. In business settings, a person with power and influence actively supporting the career advancement of a junior person is referred to as a sponsor and sponsorship programs have been used to diversify leadership. Little is known about how sponsorship functions in academic medicine. OBJECTIVE: To explore perceptions of sponsorship and its relationship to gender and career advancement in academic medicine. DESIGN: Qualitative study using semi-structured, oneon-one interviews with sponsors and protégés. PARTICIPANTS: Twelve sponsors (clinical department chairs) and 11 protégés (participants of a school of medicine executive leadership program [N = 23]) at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. KEY RESULTS: All sponsors were men and all were professors, six of the 11 protégés were women, and four of the 23 participants were underrepresented minorities in medicine. We identified three themes: (1) people (how and who): women seek out and receive sponsorship differently; (2) process (faster and further): sponsorship provides an extra boost, especially for women; and (3) politics and culture (playing favorites and paying it forward): sponsorship and fairness. Informants acknowledge that sponsorship provides an extra boost for career advancement especially for women. Sponsors and protégés differ in their perceptions of how sponsorship happens. Informants describe gender differences in how sponsorship is experienced and specifically noted that women were less likely to actively seek out sponsorship and be identified as protégés compared to men. Informants describe a tension between sponsorship and core academic values such as transparency, fairness, and merit. CONCLUSION: Sponsorship is perceived to be critical to high-level advancement and is experienced differently by women. Increased understanding of how sponsorship works in academic medicine may empower individual faculty to utilize this professional relationship for career advancement and provide institutions with a strategy to diversify top leadership positions.

Willing or Hesitant? A Socioeconomic Study on the Potential Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccine in Japan

“…As negative news regarding vaccine safety in Japan and other countries is resurfacing [ 30 , 31 , 54 ], these people may have concerns about the potential side-effects and their capability of withstanding such effects. Although some recipients may experience moderate side-effects, they may take some time to recover [ 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. As the older working-age people may have higher expected opportunity costs due to greater job-related responsibilities, they may be more hesitant to receive the vaccination.…”

The Traumatic Experience of Clinical Nurses During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Which Factors are Related to Post-Traumatic Growth?

“…The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder CheckList-Civilian Version (PCL-C) was compiled by the United States PTSD symptoms Research Center in 1994 17 and was introduced into China by Chao Jiang’s team. 18 The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the Chinese version of the scale is 0.88–0.94, and the retest reliability is 0.83–0.88. 19 There are 17 items in this scale, which are mainly used to evaluate the three main symptom groups of PTSD symptoms: the recurring traumatic experience symptom group, persistent avoidance symptom group, and persistent anxiety and increased alertness symptom group.…”

The Role of Burnout in the Association between Work-Related Factors and Perceived Errors in Clinical Practice among Spanish Residents

“…Overall, these findings are consistent with the fact that the residency constitutes a transitional period that involves a complex learning process, in which, it is necessary to take into account that the resident confronts in a rather abruptly way, stressful situations in a daily basis, assumes a high level of responsibility and is subject to other organizational changes that are prolonged across the four or five years of the residency period. In this context, residents’ perceptions about how the institutions deal with these aspects are associated with their level of burnout [ 49 ]. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the development of personal skills such as the search for autonomy and an own judgment, the intervention on possible emotional maladjustments, as well as the optimization of coping skills and mechanisms that might help in their adaption to the high-demanding environment during the residency period.…”