Key Takeaways
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Bisexual, gay and lesbian medical students are less likely to finish school
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Bisexual students are twice as likely to leave before graduation, and gay and lesbian students 47% more likely
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Discrimination in medical training environments could be a reason why these students don’t become doctors
THURSDAY, June 12, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Bisexual, gay and lesbian medical students are more likely to leave school before graduation, a new study says.
Bisexual medical students were twice as likely to drop out or be dismissed from medical school, and gay and lesbian students were 47% more likely, according to findings published June 10 in JAMA Network Open.
“Although future studies need to examine the cause of these disparities in attrition, LGB students experience discrimination within medical training environments, which may lead to risk of attrition,” wrote the research team led by Dr. Sarwat Chaudhry, associate dean for student research at Yale School of Medicine.
For this study, researchers reviewed 2014 to 2017 data from the Association of American Medical Colleges to track more than 45,000 registered medical students.
Nearly 1,400 said they were bisexual on a student questionnaire, and more than 1,500 said they were gay or lesbian.
In all, 4.2% of bisexual students and 3.7% of gay and lesbian students didn’t finish medical school, compared to 2.4% of non-LGB students, the study found.
Hispanic queer people were at particularly high risk for leaving medical school, researchers found. Their attrition rates were three-and-a-half times higher than other groups.
“Members of both the LGB and Hispanic communities may encounter less supportive attitudes toward homosexuality, often more prevalent among recent immigrants or first-generation households, and traditional cultural values around notions of masculinity, authority, and gender roles, perpetuating rigid expectations around sexuality and gender expression and alienating Hispanic LGB students,” the research team wrote.
Medical schools also haven’t explicitly addressed discrimination against Hispanic students, inadvertently leaving them with less social support, researchers added.
They said future studies should examine the ways in which ethnicity and sexuality might combine to create greater problems for some medical students.
More information
The Medical Student Pride Alliance has more for future queer medical students.
SOURCE: JAMA Network Open, June 10, 2025
What This Means For You
Bisexual, gay and lesbian medical students should seek out resources to help support them and help them respond to potential discrimination.
