Black medical students' perceptions of the academic environment and of faculty and peer interactions

Abstract

After 10 years of admitting greater numbers of black medical students to North Carolina medical schools, the current study examined perceptions of four classes of black students attending these medical schools. One objective of this study was to gain a sense of how black students perceived the medical school environment. Another objective was to determine those students' levels of negative reactions generated by interactions with faculty and peers. Some of the major findings indicated that black students generally had negative perceptions of the medical school environments, and much of their reported negativism was associated with perceptions of student and white faculty interactions.