PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sarah E Fox
AU  - Ben Paxton
TI  - Sexism in a UK-wide medical examination
AID  - 10.7861/clinmed.2022-0360
DP  - 2022 Nov 01
TA  - Clinical Medicine
PG  - 584--585
VI  - 22
IP  - 6
4099  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/22/6/584.short
4100  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/22/6/584.full
SO  - Clin Med2022 Nov 01; 22
AB  - Gender bias and sexism in the health profession in the UK has been highlighted as a major problem. Efforts to reduce this must include medical training and examinations. The Situational Judgment Test (SJT) is an examination that must be passed to work as a foundation doctor in the UK; and is taken by all UK medical students. We analysed gender balance in all 215 scenarios included in the official practice papers for the SJT. We found that senior doctors were more than twice as likely to be men than women, while there was no significant gender difference in representation of foundation year-1 doctors, other health professionals or patients/relatives. This inequality has the potential to reinforce gender biases in healthcare. Medical examinations can, instead, represent an opportunity for prejudices to be challenged.