Building High Performance Teams in Pediatric Orthopaedics: Is Diversity the Problem or the Antidote?

(1)Both identity diversity and cognitive diversity should be considered when building teams striving for excellence and high performance.(2)Research on patient perceptions and preferences supports having a diverse physician workforce.(3)Discrimination, harassment, and bullying occur in the workplace for professionals who are underrepresented in medicine.(4)Orthopaedics has an upstream pipeline and retention problem. Pediatric orthopaedics appears relatively better in gender representation, but racial/ethnic diversity remains limited, and leadership representation lags behind membership demographics.(5)Data-driven strategies to design, implement, and evaluate diversity, equity, and improvement initiatives are in line with traditional evidence-based decision-making and the use of professional expertise to advance our profession.