Overview
In 2022, the University of Washington Department of Medicine (DOM) started to share departmental demographics. Available data includes DOM salaried faculty and trainees (primarily internal medicine residents and sub-specialty fellows) and staff.
Reporting DOM demographics is only one part of nurturing a supportive and collaborative culture. DOM looks to climate surveys, feedback from our community, our success in recruiting and retaining DOM faculty, staff, and trainees, and the quality and equity of healthcare that we deliver to our patients.
Due to missing data and DOM members who declined to respond, results for a single point in time should be interpreted with caution and changes over time may better reflect the DOM’s progress in fostering a supportive, collaborative culture built on equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Data sources
Self-reported demographic data were obtained for 2017 through 2023 from the University of Washington Office of Academic Personnel, following all applicable University of Washington and Washington State regulations protecting individuals’ privacy. To protect privacy, data from categories with low numbers of persons were not made available. If faculty or trainees did not report information, the response was categorized as null/no.
Staff data represent a snapshot of Workday compensation and payroll data as of 12/31/2023.
Definitions
The following categories were all self-reported.
Gender: During the available time period, only “Male” and “Female” gender categories were collected.
Disabilities: Self-identifying as having a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
Race/ethnicity: Race/ethnicity: Available racial/ethnic categories include “American Indian or Alaska Native”, “Asian”, “Black or African American”, “Hispanic or Latino”, “Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander”, “White”, and “Two or more”. Where a person explicitly declined to self-identify, the response is tracked as “Refused”. “Null/no data” indicates that no answer was provided. For individuals who identify as “Two or more” we do not have information on which specific race/ethnic groups they selected. If a person selected Hispanic or Latino, then no additional racial information was provided.
Underrepresented in Medicine (URM): This grouping is based on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) definition and includes people who identify with one of the following categories: “American Indian/Native Alaskan,” “Black,” “Latino,” and “Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander”. The definition of URM may be based on regional or local demographics and the University of Washington often includes persons of Southeast Asian descent, including Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese in the definition of URM. As ethnicity at the country level was not collected, we use the NIH definition.
Indigenous: Includes people who have indicated that they identify with at least one of the following categories: “American Indian”, “Native Alaskan”, “Native Hawaiian” or “Pacific Islander”.
Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC): Includes all people who have indicated that they identify with at least one of the following categories: “American Indian/Native Alaskan”, “Asian”, “Black”, “Hispanic”, “Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander”, or “Two or more”.
In the narrative accompanying figures, “missing” race/ethnicity is the sum of Null/no data and Refused.
Veteran status: A veteran is a former member of the Armed Forces of the United States (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard) who served on active duty and was honorably discharged.
Categories
Faculty
Only salaried faculty are included in this demographic data. Data for volunteer clinical faculty were not analyzed.
Acting: Includes Acting Instructor and Acting Assistant Professor faculty titles.
Clinical Salaried Faculty: Includes Clinical Instructor, Clinical Assistant Professor, Clinical Associate Professor, and Clinical Professor faculty titles. As the category implies, faculty in these tracks are primarily clinical in their responsibilities.
Professorial – Research: Includes Research Assistant Professor, Research Associate Professor, and Research Professor faculty titles. As the category implies, faculty in these tracks are research-oriented.
Professorial – Tenured: Includes Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor faculty titles with tenure. Professorial – Tenured faculty may be on one of two pathways: clinician/scholar or physician-scientist.
Professorial – Without Tenure (WOT): Includes Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor faculty titles without tenure. Faculty in this category are on one of two pathways, Clinician/Scholar or Physician-Scientist.
Teaching Associate – The Teaching Associate track includes faculty with primarily clinical responsibilities, who most commonly hold terminal degrees of Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN) or Physician Assistant (PA).
Trainees
Residents, including Chief Residents – This category includes internal medicine and dermatology residents, and internal medicine Chief Residents.
Fellows – This category includes fellows in ACGME-accredited and non-ACGME accredited training programs within DOM.
Because of the small numbers of postdoctoral fellows and clinician-researchers, we did not analyze these categories.
Staff
Staff encompasses classified staff (including contract classified, classified non-union, and fixed-term appointments), professional staff, and others exempt from civil service.
Within these employment categories, the datasets represent regular, regular hourly, or fixed-duration employees along with some employees in temporary hourly appointments or other appointments with less than 50% FTE, some of whom were converted to regular, regular salaried, or regular hourly appointments in 2023. Some temporary/per diem employees are not included in our datasets.