Someone Like Me: An Examination of the Importance of Race-Concordant Mentorship in Urology

Objective: To describe differences in urology mentorship exposure for medical students across race/ethnicity and to explore how much potential mentees valued the importance of race-concordant mentorship.

Methods: All medical students at UCLA received a cross-sectional survey. Dependent variables were perceived quality of mentorship in urology and association between race-concordant mentorship and perceived importance of race-concordant mentorship. Mentors were self-selected by medical students. Variables were compared across race/ethnicity using descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses. Subset analyses looking at race-concordance between mentor and student was performed using stratified Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel tests. This was performed to determine if there were differences, across race/ethnicity, in rating of importance of having a race-concordant mentor.

Results: The likelihood of having a urologist as a mentor was similar across race/ethnicity. Under-Represented in Medicine (URiM) students were more likely to report that having a mentor of the same race/ethnicity was extremely important (Asian 9%, Black 58%, Latinx 55% and White 3%, P < .001) compared to their non-URiM peers who were more likely to rate having a race-concordant mentor as not at all important (Asian 34%, Black 5%, Latinx 8%, White 79%, P < .001). URiM students with race-concordant mentors were still more likely to rate having a mentor of the same race/ethnicity as extremely/very important (73%) compared to their non-URiM peers (9%, P = .001). URiM students with race-discordant mentors also rated importance of mentors of the same race/ethnicity as extremely/very important (67%) compared to their non-URiM peers (11%, P = .006).

Conclusion: URiM medical students regard race-concordant mentorship as extremely important. Interventions addressing mentor racial/ethnic concordance and those promoting culturally responsive mentorship may optimize recruitment of URiM students into urology.