Dr. Joseph and her mentee, Dr. Siyun Xie – a Pain Medicine Fellow at Stanford Health Care – received the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) Mentoring Grant in late 2022 and proceeded to build their program throughout 2023. The year culminated in a workshop held for mentorship participants at the ASA’s Annual Meeting in October 2023 in San Francisco.

The focus of the workshop and networking session – which drew approximately 70 participants – was to explore scenarios in which students and physicians may face microaggressions and collaboratively problem-solve ways to manage these challenging situations. The workshop also featured “speed mentoring” sessions in which medical students were paired with anesthesiologists to discuss challenges in their career and how they overcame them. Dr. Joseph highlighted the diverse representation among the mentors and mentees, which included women and Native American anesthesiologists, as well as Hispanic, African American, and Asian students and physicians from across the country.

“It was a very robust discussion,” Dr. Joseph recalled. “People were so excited to meet other anesthesiologists and students from different walks of life.”

Dr. Joseph and Dr. Xie’s project, titled, “A National Medical Student Mentoring Program and Microaggression Leadership Program to Nurture and Empower the Next Generation of Underrepresented Anesthesiologists,” was conceptualized with the goal of creating a robust support network for underrepresented gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities in the specialty of anesthesiology. According to a 2021 report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, 52 percent of medical students were women, 18.5 percent were American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 8 percent were Black/African American; however, among active anesthesiology residents, only 33.5 percent were women, 1 percent were American Indian/Alaska Native, and 6.6 percent were Black/African American. In addition, research has shown that the large majority of female anesthesiologists and racial/ethnic minority anesthesiologists have experienced microagressions in the workplace.

Dr. Joseph and Dr. Xie plan to hold similar workshops at other regional, national, and international society meetings including the New York State Society of Anesthesiologists PostGraduate Assembly (NYSSA PGA) and the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS). In addition to participating in workshops, mentor and mentee pairs are developing projects focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, which they will present at subsequent national meetings.

"This is a new approach in targeting women and other minorities in order to develop future anesthesiologists,” Dr. Joseph said. “It’s important that we look at the next generation of anesthesiologists coming up in medical school and interact with them early. We want them to interact with attendings at different stages in their careers, so they get an idea of what life is like as an anesthesiologist and get different perspectives.”