SECTION THREE: MODES OF IMPLEMENTATION

This essay has examined diversity rights claims within the medical profession systemically—especially in its manner of training and admitting new practitioners to orthopedic surgery. If the above argument is correct, increasing diversity among African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and women in orthopedic surgery is necessary for moral and prudential reasons. In order to effect this vision, the following are a few first-steps that may bring us closer to this goal.

• Change in the shared community worldview that describes the model for an orthopedic surgeon. The model needs to be broadened to include a diverse set of people (gender and races). Professionals within the community must be able to “picture” minority individuals as being represented proportionally within the profession. buy antibiotics no prescription
• Include “distance traveled” considerations for admission to medical school and especially for admission to prestigious residency programs (such as orthopedic surgery). Those who have completed much of the puzzle should be given credit for such.
• Take immediate actions to create situations of mentoring that proactively seek out minorities and women in their first year of medical school so that they might feel welcomed to explore all the areas of medicine and that their talents and personal worldviews might incline them. This includes advice on early planning so that they might create their strongest resume.
• Create workshops with faculty so that they might devise and obtain ownership for specific initiatives directed at self-study of the current program with the goal in mind that all programs in medicine be made available to all students in a real way— through offering development sessions and ensuring that all students are counseled in a nurturing way.

These suggestions are first steps. These are not measures aimed at holding anyone’s hand. They are rights that medical students deserve—especially those who have come a long way to get there. The medical profession has a contract with society to produce excellent physicians that can meet the needs of society as a whole. A lack of diversity means a functional gap in excellence. Greater diversity that matches the demographics of the society will enhance the performance of professional practice. canadian pharmacy

The medical community should also operate according to moral criteria. Obviously, problems of societal racism and sexism cannot single-handedly be solved in any one arena. But that should not be used as an excuse for inaction. A fundamental effort toward democratic opportunity is needed now—not in a legalistic fashion but in the spirit of authentic good will that, on the one hand fulfills society’s moral duty, while on the other makes the medical community itself a more efficient and excellent pur veyor of beneficence and nonmalfeasance. The orthopedic surgeons of America should demand nothing less!